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 16 March 2020 at 09:34 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 ∠2° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2020 after 22 days on 8 April 2020 at 02:35.
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 2.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1886" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 249 of Meeus index or 1202 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 56 minutes and it is 58 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2020. 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 5 hours and 12 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 51 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 ∠152.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠177.9°.
6 days since point of perigee on 10 March 2020 at 06:33 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 24 March 2020 at 15:23 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 380 133 km (236 204 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 690 km (252 705 mi).
11 days after ascending node on 4 March 2020 at 14:58 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 17 March 2020 at 01:00 in ♑ Capricorn.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 5 March 2020 at 01:34 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.441° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-23.540° at the point of next southern standstill on 17 March 2020 at 14:07 in ♑ Capricorn.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 24 March 2020 at 09:28 in ♈ Aries 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