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 20 July 2022 at 14:18 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 ∠3° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2022 after 22 days on 12 August 2022 at 01:36.
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 2.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1842" and ∠1888".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 278 of Meeus index or 1231 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 3 minutes and it is 41 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 19 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 44 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 ∠178.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠202°.
7 days since point of perigee on 13 July 2022 at 09:08 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 July 2022 at 10:22 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 389 036 km (241 736 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 276 km (252 448 mi).
10 days after descending node on 9 July 2022 at 17:28 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 July 2022 at 09:21 in ♉ Taurus.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 12 July 2022 at 21:16 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.921° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.941° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 July 2022 at 09:19 in ♋ Cancer.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 28 July 2022 at 17:55 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