Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 16 September 2014 at 02:05 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 ∠16° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2014 after 22 days on 8 October 2014 at 10:51.
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 4.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1828" and ∠1908".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 181 of Meeus index or 1134 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 1 minute and it is 18 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2014. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 17 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 46 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠192.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠218.3°.
7 days since point of perigee on 8 September 2014 at 03:29 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 20 September 2014 at 14:22 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 392 147 km (243 669 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 846 km (252 181 mi).
4 days after descending node on 11 September 2014 at 07:32 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 25 September 2014 at 17:41 in ♎ Libra.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 3 September 2014 at 13:10 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.641° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠18.579° at the point of next northern standstill on 16 September 2014 at 05:15 in ♊ Gemini.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 24 September 2014 at 06:14 in ♎ Libra 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