Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 24 August 2046 at 18:36 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 ∠2° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2046 after 21 days on 15 September 2046 at 06:39.
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 4.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1814" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 576 of Meeus index or 1529 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 1 minute and it is longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest 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 4 hours and 44 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 25 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 ∠328° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠345.8°.
4 days since point of apogee on 20 August 2046 at 01:53 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 September 2046 at 14:28 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 395 050 km (245 473 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 321 km (222 650 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 15 August 2046 at 00:43 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 August 2046 at 10:45 in ♌ Leo.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 11 August 2046 at 15:06 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.723° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠26.666° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 August 2046 at 07:50 in ♊ Gemini.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 31 August 2046 at 18:25 in ♍ Virgo 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