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 12 May 2023 at 14:28 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 ∠20° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2023 after 22 days on 4 June 2023 at 03:42.
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 3.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 288 of Meeus index or 1241 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 41 minutes and it is 1 hour and 3 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 3 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 6 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 ∠59.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠92.6°.
1 day since point of perigee on 11 May 2023 at 04:57 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 May 2023 at 01:39 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 363 395 km (225 803 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 510 km (251 351 mi).
7 days after descending node on 4 May 2023 at 21:57 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 17 May 2023 at 19:36 in ♈ Aries.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 9 May 2023 at 09:01 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.937° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.903° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 May 2023 at 14:08 in ♊ Gemini.
22 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 7 days on 19 May 2023 at 15:53 in ♉ Taurus 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