Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 8 July 2015 at 20:24 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 ∠11° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2015 after 22 days on 31 July 2015 at 10:43.
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 4.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1969" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 191 of Meeus index or 1144 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 19 minutes and it is 2 hours and 10 minutes shorter 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 1 hour and 25 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 44 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 ∠78.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠112.8°.
2 days since point of perigee on 5 July 2015 at 18:54 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 21 July 2015 at 11:02 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 364 081 km (226 229 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 837 km (251 554 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♈ Aries at 00:07 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 21 July 2015 at 19:32 in ♍ Virgo.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 1 July 2015 at 06:48 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.445° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.417° at the point of next northern standstill on 14 July 2015 at 04:24 in ♊ Gemini.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 16 July 2015 at 01:24 in ♋ Cancer 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