Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 2 October 2018 at 09:45 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 ∠10° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2018 after 22 days on 24 October 2018 at 16:45.
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 2.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1963" and ∠1917".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 231 of Meeus index or 1184 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 45 minutes and it is 2 hours and 30 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 59 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 10 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 ∠28° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠49.6°.
12 days since point of apogee on 20 September 2018 at 00:54 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 5 October 2018 at 22:29 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 365 144 km (226 890 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 366 396 km (227 668 mi).
12 days after descending node on 20 September 2018 at 09:30 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 4 October 2018 at 03:10 in ♌ Leo.
At 13:03 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠21.037°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-21.154° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 15 October 2018 at 17:26.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 9 October 2018 at 03:47 in ♎ Libra 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