Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 21 August 2030 at 01:15 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 first ∠3° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2030 after 21 days on 11 September 2030 at 21:18.
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 7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1897".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 378 of Meeus index or 1331 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 56 minutes and it is 1 hour and 9 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 48 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 21 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 ∠244.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠279.9°.
Moon is at apogee at 22:49 about 11 days since last perigee on 9 August 2030 at 22:50 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 4 September 2030 at 17:06 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 404 174 km (251 142 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2030. It is 1 234 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 123 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
12 days after ascending node on 8 August 2030 at 19:44 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 August 2030 at 08:09 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 9 August 2030 at 01:58 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.572° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠22.465° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 August 2030 at 18:22 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 28 August 2030 at 23:07 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