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 18 February 2017 at 19:33 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♐ Sagittarius later.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2017 after 22 days on 12 March 2017 at 14:54.
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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1941".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 211 of Meeus index or 1164 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 51 minutes and it is 2 hours and 52 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 2 hours and 7 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 56 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 ∠259.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠295°.
Moon is at apogee at 21:14 about 12 days since last perigee on 6 February 2017 at 13:59 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 3 March 2017 at 07:24 in ♉ Taurus.
This apogee Moon is 404 376 km (251 268 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 032 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 333 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 11 February 2017 at 19:49 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 26 February 2017 at 06:28 in ♓ Pisces.
10 days since the last northern standstill on 7 February 2017 at 18:34 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.865° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.848° at the point of next southern standstill on 21 February 2017 at 20:50 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 26 February 2017 at 14:58 in ♓ Pisces 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