Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 28 July 2024 at 02:51 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2024 after 23 days on 19 August 2024 at 18:26.
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 3.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1964" and ∠1890".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 303 of Meeus index or 1256 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 16 minutes and it is 2 hours and 27 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 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 41 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 ∠93.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠127.3°.
3 days since point of perigee on 24 July 2024 at 05:43 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 9 August 2024 at 01:32 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 364 883 km (226 728 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 298 km (251 841 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 26 July 2024 at 05:33 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 9 August 2024 at 01:06 in ♎ Libra.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 19 July 2024 at 10:59 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.404° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.455° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 August 2024 at 05:59 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day 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 7 days on 4 August 2024 at 11:13 in ♌ Leo 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