Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 21 January 2025 at 20:31 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 ∠2° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2025 after 22 days on 12 February 2025 at 13:53.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 309 of Meeus index or 1262 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 9 minutes and it is 2 hours 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 1 hour and 25 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 38 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 ∠272.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠305.9°.
Moon is at apogee at 04:55 about 13 days since last perigee on 7 January 2025 at 23:34 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 2 February 2025 at 02:43 in ♈ Aries.
This apogee Moon is 404 299 km (251 220 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 109 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 410 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after descending node on 19 January 2025 at 01:48 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 February 2025 at 22:06 in ♓ Pisces.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 12 January 2025 at 04:30 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.464° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.534° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 January 2025 at 13:27 in ♐ Sagittarius.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 29 January 2025 at 12:36 in ♒ Aquarius 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