Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 30 July 2040 at 21:06 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 ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2040 after 22 days on 22 August 2040 at 09:09.
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 1.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1854" and ∠1890".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 501 of Meeus index or 1454 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 12 minutes and it is 25 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2040. 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 2 hours and 28 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 35 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 ∠175.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠199°.
6 days since point of perigee on 23 July 2040 at 19:15 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 5 August 2040 at 23:43 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 386 521 km (240 173 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 353 km (252 496 mi).
10 days after descending node on 20 July 2040 at 02:18 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 August 2040 at 17:44 in ♉ Taurus.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 22 July 2040 at 14:28 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.179° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.211° at the point of next northern standstill on 4 August 2040 at 21:26 in ♋ Cancer.
24 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 8 August 2040 at 00:26 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