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 18 March 2047 at 16:11 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 ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2047 after 22 days on 10 April 2047 at 10:35.
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 0.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1921" and ∠1927".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 583 of Meeus index or 1536 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 18 minutes and it is 22 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2047. 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 34 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 29 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 ∠133° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠161.9°.
5 days since point of perigee on 13 March 2047 at 05:32 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 28 March 2047 at 11:07 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 373 148 km (231 863 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 463 km (252 564 mi).
10 days after descending node on 8 March 2047 at 01:12 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 20 March 2047 at 13:43 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 02:57 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-25.782°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠25.632° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 1 April 2047 at 17:57.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 26 March 2047 at 11:44 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