Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 15 March 2023 at 02:08 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 ∠0° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2023 after 21 days on 6 April 2023 at 04:35.
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 1.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1952" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 286 of Meeus index or 1239 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 17 minutes and it is 32 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 2 hours and 27 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 42 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 ∠15.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠34.1°.
11 days since point of apogee on 3 March 2023 at 18:01 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 March 2023 at 15:16 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 367 214 km (228 176 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 698 km (225 370 mi).
4 days after descending node on 11 March 2023 at 08:53 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 March 2023 at 02:08 in ♉ Taurus.
At 21:43 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.831°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.898° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 28 March 2023 at 21:29.
18 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 21 March 2023 at 17:23 in ♓ Pisces 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