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 31 October 2018 at 16:40 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 ∠5° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2018 after 22 days on 23 November 2018 at 05:39.
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% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 232 of Meeus index or 1185 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes and it is 3 hours and 3 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 29 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 40 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 ∠49.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠79.7°.
Moon is at perigee at 20:05 about 14 days since last apogee on 17 October 2018 at 19:16 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 14 November 2018 at 15:57 in ♒ Aquarius.
This perigee Moon is 370 201 km (230 032 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2018. It is 7 693 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 155 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
Moon is in ascending node in ♌ Leo at 03:46 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 13 November 2018 at 14:04 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 29 October 2018 at 18:34 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.292° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.401° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 November 2018 at 02:21 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 03:46 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 7 days on 7 November 2018 at 16:02 in ♏ Scorpio 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