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 19 May 2017 at 00:33 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 about ∠22° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2017 after 22 days on 9 June 2017 at 13:10.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 3.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1836" and ∠1897".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 214 of Meeus index or 1167 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 28 minutes and it is 42 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 5 hours and 16 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 53 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 ∠340.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠356°.
5 days since point of apogee on 12 May 2017 at 19:51 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 May 2017 at 01:23 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 390 323 km (242 535 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 210 km (221 960 mi).
14 days after ascending node on 4 May 2017 at 10:42 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 19 May 2017 at 01:30 in ♒ Aquarius.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 14 May 2017 at 20:29 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-19.302° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠19.362° at the point of next northern standstill on 27 May 2017 at 23:36 in ♋ Cancer.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the first to the middle part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 25 May 2017 at 19:44 in ♉ Taurus 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