Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 52% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 22 February 2014 at 17:15 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 first ∠1° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2014 after 22 days on 16 March 2014 at 17:09.
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 0.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1925" and ∠1939".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 174 of Meeus index or 1127 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 21 minutes and it is 24 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2014. 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 23 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 46 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 ∠8.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠25.1°.
10 days since point of apogee on 12 February 2014 at 05:09 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 27 February 2014 at 19:52 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 372 353 km (231 369 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 439 km (223 966 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 20 February 2014 at 03:28 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 4 March 2014 at 17:45 in ♈ Aries.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 9 February 2014 at 15:21 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.306° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-19.175° at the point of next southern standstill on 24 February 2014 at 01:24 in ♐ Sagittarius.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 1 March 2014 at 08:00 in ♓ Pisces 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