Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 31 March 2016 at 15:17 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 ∠10° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2016 after 21 days on 22 April 2016 at 05:24.
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 4.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1843" and ∠1920".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 200 of Meeus index or 1153 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour and 23 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 3 hours and 15 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 54 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 ∠339.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠355.6°.
5 days since point of apogee on 25 March 2016 at 14:16 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 7 April 2016 at 17:36 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 388 891 km (241 646 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 164 km (221 931 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 22 March 2016 at 12:59 in ♍ Virgo 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 5 April 2016 at 17:27 in ♓ Pisces.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 30 March 2016 at 22:12 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.239° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.288° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 April 2016 at 12:12 in ♋ Cancer.
8 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 6 days on 7 April 2016 at 11:24 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