Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 8 May 2018 at 02:09 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 Flower Moon of May 2018 after 21 days on 29 May 2018 at 14:20.
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 6.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1783" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 226 of Meeus index or 1179 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 51 minutes and it is 1 hour and 56 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 hours and 53 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 16 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 ∠296.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠321.7°.
2 days since point of apogee on 6 May 2018 at 00:35 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 May 2018 at 21:06 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 401 958 km (249 765 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 777 km (226 041 mi).
1 day after descending node on 7 May 2018 at 10:24 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 20 May 2018 at 13:13 in ♌ Leo.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 4 May 2018 at 23:00 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.562° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.652° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 May 2018 at 15:02 in ♋ Cancer.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 15 May 2018 at 11:48 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