Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 58% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 19 December 2019 at 04:57 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 ∠17° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2020 after 23 days on 10 January 2020 at 19:21.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 246 of Meeus index or 1199 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 8 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 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 1 hour and 23 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 39 minutes 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 ∠50.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠82.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 20:30 about 13 days since last apogee on 5 December 2019 at 04:09 in ♓ Pisces 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 2 January 2020 at 01:30 in ♓ Pisces.
This perigee Moon is 370 260 km (230 069 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2019. It is 7 752 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 96 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
4 days after ascending node on 13 December 2019 at 14:15 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 26 December 2019 at 13:01 in ♑ Capricorn.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 13 December 2019 at 20:57 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.226° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.227° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 December 2019 at 20:11 in ♑ Capricorn.
4 days 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 7 days on 26 December 2019 at 05:13 in ♑ Capricorn 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