Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 52% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 21 March 2044 at 16:52 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 2044 after 21 days on 12 April 2044 at 09:39.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1925".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 546 of Meeus index or 1499 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 14 minutes and it is 2 hours and 58 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 30 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 33 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 ∠272.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠304.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 01:56 about 13 days since last perigee on 7 March 2044 at 20:36 in ♊ Gemini 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 April 2044 at 02:16 in ♊ Gemini.
This apogee Moon is 404 337 km (251 243 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 071 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 372 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
7 days after descending node on 13 March 2044 at 13:10 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 27 March 2044 at 23:51 in ♓ Pisces.
At 10:24 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-28.641°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2044. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.596° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 3 April 2044 at 22:19.
20 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 7 days on 29 March 2044 at 09:26 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