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 21 October 2019 at 12:39 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2019 after 22 days on 12 November 2019 at 13:34.
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 0.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1935" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 244 of Meeus index or 1197 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 12 minutes and it is 2 hours and 15 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 3 hours and 32 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 37 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 ∠11.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠28.3°.
10 days since point of apogee on 10 October 2019 at 18:29 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 October 2019 at 10:41 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 370 455 km (230 190 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 316 km (224 511 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 20 October 2019 at 07:28 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 1 November 2019 at 21:40 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 20 October 2019 at 08:07 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.947° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.047° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 November 2019 at 00:33 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 28 October 2019 at 03:38 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