Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 23 September 2046 at 08:16 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 ∠2° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2046 after 21 days on 14 October 2046 at 23:41.
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 2.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1867" and ∠1913".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 577 of Meeus index or 1530 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 1 minute and it is 52 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
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 ∠345.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠1.2°.
7 days since point of apogee on 16 September 2046 at 10:11 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 September 2046 at 00:48 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 383 895 km (238 541 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 939 km (221 792 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 11 September 2046 at 05:06 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 25 September 2046 at 17:54 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 22 September 2046 at 15:17 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.482° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.388° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 October 2046 at 04:08 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 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 6 days on 30 September 2046 at 02:25 in ♎ Libra 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