Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 13 April 2023 at 09:11 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 ∠25° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2023 after 22 days on 5 May 2023 at 17:34.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 2.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1969" and ∠1913".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 287 of Meeus index or 1240 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 49 minutes and it is 52 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 1 hour and 55 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 14 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 ∠34.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠59.2°.
13 days since point of apogee on 31 March 2023 at 11:18 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 16 April 2023 at 02:22 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 364 030 km (226 198 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 967 km (228 644 mi).
5 days after descending node on 7 April 2023 at 13:51 in ♎ Libra 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 20 April 2023 at 11:32 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 12 April 2023 at 03:15 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.947° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.957° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 April 2023 at 05:53 in ♋ Cancer.
20 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 6 days on 20 April 2023 at 04:12 in ♈ Aries 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