Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 9 March 2018 at 11:20 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 ∠19° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 22 days on 31 March 2018 at 12:37.
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 8.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1777" and ∠1932".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 224 of Meeus index or 1177 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 6 minutes and it is 3 hours and 20 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 3 hours and 22 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 41 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 ∠227.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠262.6°.
9 days since point of perigee on 27 February 2018 at 14:48 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 day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 March 2018 at 09:13 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 403 395 km (250 658 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 682 km (251 458 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 28 February 2018 at 05:03 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 March 2018 at 03:48 in ♒ Aquarius.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 25 February 2018 at 20:07 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.056° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.112° at the point of next southern standstill on 11 March 2018 at 06:39 in ♑ Capricorn.
9 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 March 2018 at 13:12 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