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 16 March 2031 at 06:36 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 ∠1° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2031 after 22 days on 7 April 2031 at 17:21.
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 2.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 385 of Meeus index or 1338 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 8 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 44 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 25 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 ∠41.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠70.3°.
13 days since point of apogee on 2 March 2031 at 18:57 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 March 2031 at 18:58 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 363 357 km (225 780 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 634 km (229 680 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 14 March 2031 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 27 March 2031 at 14:22 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 15 March 2031 at 19:06 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.353° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.242° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 March 2031 at 04:58 in ♊ Gemini.
2 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 6 days on 23 March 2031 at 03:49 in ♈ Aries 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