Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 12 July 2020 at 23:29 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 ∠15° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2020 after 22 days on 3 August 2020 at 15:59.
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 6.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 253 of Meeus index or 1206 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 52 minutes and it is 1 hour and 43 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 53 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 17 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 ∠263.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠296.9°.
Moon is at apogee at 19:27 about 12 days since last perigee on 30 June 2020 at 02:09 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 25 July 2020 at 04:54 in ♎ Libra.
This apogee Moon is 404 201 km (251 159 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2020. It is 1 207 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 150 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
8 days after descending node on 4 July 2020 at 03:18 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 18 July 2020 at 12:33 in ♊ Gemini.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 5 July 2020 at 01:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-24.064° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.069° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 July 2020 at 11:51 in ♋ Cancer.
21 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 20 July 2020 at 17:33 in ♋ Cancer 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