Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 7 January 2040 at 11:05 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 ∠17° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2040 after 21 days on 29 January 2040 at 07:54.
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 2.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1898" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 494 of Meeus index or 1447 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 53 minutes and it is 6 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 1 hour and 51 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 18 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 ∠356.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠12.4°.
8 days since point of apogee on 29 December 2039 at 16:34 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 13 January 2040 at 10:03 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 377 618 km (234 641 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 769 km (222 307 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 28 December 2039 at 08:24 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 January 2040 at 10:06 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 30 December 2039 at 16:29 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.448° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.460° at the point of next southern standstill on 13 January 2040 at 06:43 in ♑ Capricorn.
10 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 14 January 2040 at 03:25 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