Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 26 July 2016 at 23:00 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 leaving the last ∠2° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2016 after 22 days on 18 August 2016 at 09:27.
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 4.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 204 of Meeus index or 1157 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 44 minutes and it is 2 hours and 35 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 3 hours and 1 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 9 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 ∠48.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠77.9°.
13 days since point of apogee on 13 July 2016 at 05:24 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 27 July 2016 at 11:25 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 363 555 km (225 903 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 659 km (229 695 mi).
3 days after descending node on 23 July 2016 at 07:49 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 August 2016 at 07:48 in ♍ Virgo.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 18 July 2016 at 03:41 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.569° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.529° at the point of next northern standstill on 31 July 2016 at 04:53 in ♋ Cancer.
17 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 7 days on 2 August 2016 at 20:45 in ♌ Leo 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