Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 6 September 2023 at 22:21 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 ∠9° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2023 after 22 days on 29 September 2023 at 09:57.
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 2.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1849" and ∠1904".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 292 of Meeus index or 1245 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 2 minutes and it is 13 minutes shorter 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 3 hours and 18 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 45 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 ∠179.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠202.9°.
6 days since point of perigee on 30 August 2023 at 15:51 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 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 12 September 2023 at 15:42 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 387 646 km (240 872 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 289 km (252 456 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 3 September 2023 at 07:44 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 17 September 2023 at 19:18 in ♎ Libra.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 26 August 2023 at 20:22 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.095° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.168° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 September 2023 at 13:18 in ♊ Gemini.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 15 September 2023 at 01:40 in ♍ Virgo 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