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 22 October 2016 at 19:14 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 ∠4° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2016 after 23 days on 14 November 2016 at 13:52.
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 1.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1908" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 207 of Meeus index or 1160 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 27 minutes and it is 1 hour and 13 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 longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 20 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠144.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠170.6°.
5 days since point of perigee on 16 October 2016 at 23:36 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 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 31 October 2016 at 19:29 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 375 628 km (233 404 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 660 km (252 687 mi).
9 days after descending node on 13 October 2016 at 09:43 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 October 2016 at 01:44 in ♍ Virgo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 20 October 2016 at 23:38 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.619° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.737° at the point of next southern standstill on 4 November 2016 at 13:04 in ♐ Sagittarius.
23 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 8 days on 30 October 2016 at 17:38 in ♏ Scorpio 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