Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 47% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 24 January 2014 at 05:19 UTC.
The moon rises at midnight and sets at noon. It is visible to the south in the morning.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠8° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2014 after 21 days on 14 February 2014 at 23:53.
There is low ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at big angle, so their combined tidal force is weak.
Lunar disc appears visually 3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1892" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 173 of Meeus index or 1126 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 24 minutes and it is 3 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 20 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 49 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠353° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠8.3°.
8 days since point of apogee on 16 January 2014 at 01:53 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 January 2014 at 09:58 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 378 782 km (235 364 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 080 km (221 879 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♏ Scorpio at 02:55 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 5 February 2014 at 12:41 in ♉ Taurus.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 13 January 2014 at 08:14 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.501° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.396° at the point of next southern standstill on 27 January 2014 at 16:31 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 02:55 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 6 days on 30 January 2014 at 21:39 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is going to be in a New Moon geocentric conjunction with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Moon-Earth syzygy alignment.
Parts of this Lunar Calendar are based on Planetary Ephemeris Data Courtesy of Fred Espenak, www.Astropixels.com
Moon phase image credit to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, svs.gsfc.nasa.gov