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 8 January 2018 at 22:25 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 ∠13° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 23 days on 31 January 2018 at 13:27.
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 ∠1859" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 222 of Meeus index or 1175 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 47 minutes and it is 59 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2018. 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 7 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length and it is the longest synodic month length of 21st century.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠173.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠198.1°.
6 days since point of perigee on 1 January 2018 at 21:54 in ♋ Cancer 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 15 January 2018 at 02:10 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 385 505 km (239 542 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 461 km (252 563 mi).
4 days after ascending node on 4 January 2018 at 07:48 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 18 January 2018 at 14:28 in ♒ Aquarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 2 January 2018 at 00:01 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.055° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.048° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 January 2018 at 16:28 in ♑ Capricorn.
4 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 17 January 2018 at 02:17 in ♑ Capricorn 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