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 2 January 2016 at 05:30 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 ∠14° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2016 after 21 days on 24 January 2016 at 01:46.
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 9.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 197 of Meeus index or 1150 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 53 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 2 hours and 17 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 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 ∠255.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠292.2°.
Moon is at apogee at 11:53 about 12 days since last perigee on 21 December 2015 at 08:53 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 15 January 2016 at 02:10 in ♓ Pisces.
This apogee Moon is 404 279 km (251 207 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 129 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 430 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 31 December 2015 at 20:19 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 January 2016 at 15:48 in ♓ Pisces.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 25 December 2015 at 07:30 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.444° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.420° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 January 2016 at 17:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 10 January 2016 at 01:30 in ♑ Capricorn 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