Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 12 April 2015 at 03:44 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2015 after 21 days on 4 May 2015 at 03:42.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1938" and ∠1914".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 188 of Meeus index or 1141 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 21 minutes and it is 5 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 3 hours and 23 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 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 ∠9.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠27.1°.
10 days since point of apogee on 1 April 2015 at 12:59 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 April 2015 at 03:53 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 369 775 km (229 768 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 026 km (224 331 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 4 April 2015 at 03:17 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 17 April 2015 at 13:07 in ♈ Aries.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 10 April 2015 at 07:46 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.250° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.280° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 April 2015 at 23:26 in ♊ Gemini.
8 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 18 April 2015 at 18:57 in ♈ Aries 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