Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 7 March 2048 at 10:45 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 ∠18° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2048 after 22 days on 30 March 2048 at 02:04.
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 1.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 595 of Meeus index or 1548 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 56 minutes and it is 56 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 1 hour and 12 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 51 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 ∠64.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠100.4°.
2 days since point of perigee on 5 March 2048 at 02:21 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 20 March 2048 at 14:41 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 363 851 km (226 087 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 637 km (251 430 mi).
11 days after descending node on 24 February 2048 at 12:13 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 8 March 2048 at 14:31 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 13:15 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-24.235°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠24.093° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 21 March 2048 at 12:10.
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 14 March 2048 at 14:28 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