Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 8 April 2018 at 07:18 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 ∠21° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2018 after 21 days on 30 April 2018 at 00:58.
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 8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1916".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 225 of Meeus index or 1178 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 46 minutes and it is 2 hours and 55 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 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 7 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠262.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠296.5°.
Moon is at apogee at 05:32 about 12 days since last perigee on 26 March 2018 at 17:17 in ♋ Cancer 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 20 April 2018 at 14:44 in ♊ Gemini.
This apogee Moon is 404 145 km (251 124 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2018. It is 1 263 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 94 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after ascending node on 27 March 2018 at 10:56 in ♌ Leo 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 10 April 2018 at 08:09 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 7 April 2018 at 14:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.320° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.445° at the point of next northern standstill on 21 April 2018 at 07:38 in ♋ Cancer.
12 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 7 days on 16 April 2018 at 01:57 in ♈ Aries 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