Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 26 July 2046 at 03:19 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 ∠4° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2046 after 22 days on 16 August 2046 at 14:50.
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 6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1779" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 575 of Meeus index or 1528 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 47 minutes and it is 47 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 3 hours and 57 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 12 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 ∠304.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠328°.
2 days since point of apogee on 23 July 2046 at 10:37 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 4 August 2046 at 09:16 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 402 863 km (250 327 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 170 km (225 042 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 18 July 2046 at 17:49 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 2 August 2046 at 00:47 in ♌ Leo.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 15 July 2046 at 09:24 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.722° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.730° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 July 2046 at 22:44 in ♊ Gemini.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 2 August 2046 at 10:25 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