Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 17 January 2020 at 12:58 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 ∠4° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2020 after 22 days on 9 February 2020 at 07:33.
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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1962" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 247 of Meeus index or 1200 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour 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 3 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 18 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 ∠82.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠120.5°.
3 days since point of perigee on 13 January 2020 at 20:20 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 29 January 2020 at 21:28 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 365 355 km (227 021 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 390 km (251 898 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 9 January 2020 at 23:29 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 January 2020 at 20:31 in ♑ Capricorn.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 10 January 2020 at 06:03 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.223° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.225° at the point of next southern standstill on 23 January 2020 at 03:37 in ♑ Capricorn.
7 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 24 January 2020 at 21:42 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