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 1 February 2016 at 03:28 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 ∠4° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2016 after 22 days on 22 February 2016 at 18:20.
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 9.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 198 of Meeus index or 1151 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 8 minutes and it is 1 hour and 52 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 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 39 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 ∠292.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠319.8°.
1 day since point of apogee on 30 January 2016 at 09:10 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 11 February 2016 at 02:42 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 404 601 km (251 407 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 358 km (226 402 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 27 January 2016 at 23:58 in ♍ Virgo 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 10 February 2016 at 20:46 in ♓ Pisces.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 21 January 2016 at 16:41 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.375° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.303° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 February 2016 at 04:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
3 days 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 8 days on 8 February 2016 at 14:39 in ♒ Aquarius 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