Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 25 August 2016 at 03:41 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 ∠23° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2016 after 23 days on 16 September 2016 at 19:05.
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 ∠1971" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 205 of Meeus index or 1158 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 19 minutes and it is 2 hours and 49 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 25 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 44 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 ∠77.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠112.8°.
2 days since point of perigee on 22 August 2016 at 01:20 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 6 September 2016 at 18:44 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 363 742 km (226 019 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 059 km (251 692 mi).
4 days after descending node on 19 August 2016 at 14:14 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 September 2016 at 15:27 in ♍ Virgo.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 14 August 2016 at 13:05 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.481° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.455° at the point of next northern standstill on 27 August 2016 at 11:17 in ♋ Cancer.
19 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 1 September 2016 at 09:03 in ♍ Virgo 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