Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 27 June 2016 at 18:19 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 ∠3° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2016 after 22 days on 19 July 2016 at 22:57.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1958" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 203 of Meeus index or 1156 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 43 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 4 hours and 43 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 26 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 ∠27.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠48.9°.
12 days since point of apogee on 15 June 2016 at 12:00 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 July 2016 at 06:45 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 366 071 km (227 466 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 983 km (227 411 mi).
1 day after descending node on 26 June 2016 at 05:28 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 9 July 2016 at 01:41 in ♍ Virgo.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 20 June 2016 at 18:52 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.610° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.598° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 July 2016 at 20:06 in ♊ Gemini.
15 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 6 days on 4 July 2016 at 11:01 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