Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 47% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 4 January 2024 at 03:30 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 ∠18° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2024 after 21 days on 25 January 2024 at 17:54.
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 8.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1788" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 296 of Meeus index or 1249 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 25 minutes and it is 1 hour and 23 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 19 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 50 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 ∠303.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠328°.
2 days since point of apogee on 1 January 2024 at 15:28 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 13 January 2024 at 10:35 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 400 773 km (249 029 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 264 km (225 100 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♎ Libra at 18:52 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 17 January 2024 at 14:05 in ♈ Aries.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 26 December 2023 at 21:50 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.131° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.164° at the point of next southern standstill on 10 January 2024 at 07:04 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 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 11 January 2024 at 11:57 in ♑ Capricorn 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