Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 21 November 2016 at 08:33 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 ∠1° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2016 after 22 days on 14 December 2016 at 00:06.
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 4.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1851" and ∠1943".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 208 of Meeus index or 1161 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 40 minutes and it is 5 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2016. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 5 hours and 56 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 7 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 ∠170.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠194.9°.
7 days since point of perigee on 14 November 2016 at 11:23 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 November 2016 at 20:08 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 387 214 km (240 604 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 556 km (252 622 mi).
11 days after descending node on 9 November 2016 at 15:57 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 November 2016 at 02:48 in ♍ Virgo.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 17 November 2016 at 09:32 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.814° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.908° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 December 2016 at 19:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
26 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 29 November 2016 at 12:18 in ♐ Sagittarius 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