Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 52% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 7 February 2018 at 15:54 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 ∠17° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 22 days on 2 March 2018 at 00:51.
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 7.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1809" and ∠1945".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 223 of Meeus index or 1176 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 48 minutes and it is 2 hours and 42 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. It is 59 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 ∠198.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠227.1°.
8 days since point of perigee on 30 January 2018 at 09:54 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 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 February 2018 at 14:16 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 396 218 km (246 198 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 701 km (252 091 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 31 January 2018 at 18:46 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 14 February 2018 at 21:11 in ♒ Aquarius.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 29 January 2018 at 11:32 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.027° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.026° at the point of next southern standstill on 11 February 2018 at 23:21 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 15 February 2018 at 21:05 in ♒ Aquarius 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