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 30 April 2016 at 03:29 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 ∠15° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2016 after 21 days on 21 May 2016 at 21:15.
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 0.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1900" and ∠1904".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 201 of Meeus index or 1154 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 6 minutes and it is 36 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 4 hours and 38 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 31 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 ∠355.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠10.8°.
8 days since point of apogee on 21 April 2016 at 16:05 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 6 May 2016 at 04:14 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 377 186 km (234 373 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 828 km (222 344 mi).
11 days after ascending node on 18 April 2016 at 18:04 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 3 May 2016 at 01:27 in ♓ Pisces.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 27 April 2016 at 04:44 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.382° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.447° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 May 2016 at 21:54 in ♊ Gemini.
11 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 6 May 2016 at 19:30 in ♉ Taurus 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