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 29 September 2021 at 01:57 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2021 after 22 days on 20 October 2021 at 14:57.
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 7.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1775" and ∠1915".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 268 of Meeus index or 1221 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 14 minutes and it is 5 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 2 hours and 30 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 39 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 ∠297.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠323.3°.
1 day since point of apogee on 26 September 2021 at 21:44 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 8 October 2021 at 17:28 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 403 886 km (250 963 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 388 km (225 799 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 26 September 2021 at 07:33 in ♊ Gemini 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 9 October 2021 at 19:35 in ♏ Scorpio.
13 days since the last southern standstill on 15 September 2021 at 03:48 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.980° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠26.109° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 September 2021 at 08:26 in ♋ Cancer.
2 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 6 October 2021 at 11:05 in ♎ Libra 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