Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 43% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 17 October 2022 at 17:15 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 first ∠4° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2022 after 20 days on 8 November 2022 at 11:02.
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 8.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1926".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 281 of Meeus index or 1234 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 54 minutes and it is 45 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 10 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 53 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 ∠265.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠299.9°.
1 day since point of apogee on 17 October 2022 at 10:21 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 29 October 2022 at 14:48 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 404 888 km (251 586 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 289 km (228 844 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 11 October 2022 at 21:49 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 26 October 2022 at 06:30 in ♏ Scorpio.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 16 October 2022 at 06:12 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.473° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.500° at the point of next southern standstill on 30 October 2022 at 01:04 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 25 October 2022 at 10:49 in ♏ Scorpio 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