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 27 February 2046 at 16:23 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 ∠7° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2046 after 22 days on 22 March 2046 at 09:27.
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 3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1880" and ∠1937".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 570 of Meeus index or 1523 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 6 minutes and it is 1 hour and 30 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2046. 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 6 hours and 22 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 41 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 ∠159.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠184.1°.
6 days since point of perigee on 21 February 2046 at 06:43 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 March 2046 at 06:49 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 381 287 km (236 921 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 576 km (252 635 mi).
7 days after descending node on 19 February 2046 at 17:48 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 4 March 2046 at 21:25 in ♒ Aquarius.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 16 February 2046 at 04:45 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.295° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.260° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 February 2046 at 17:20 in ♐ Sagittarius.
21 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 7 March 2046 at 18:15 in ♓ Pisces 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