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 30 September 2048 at 02:45 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 first ∠0° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2048 after 22 days on 21 October 2048 at 18:25.
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 8.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1916".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 602 of Meeus index or 1555 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 21 minutes and it is 28 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 1 hour and 23 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 46 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 ∠276° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠307.5°.
Moon is at apogee at 06:20 about 13 days since last perigee on 15 September 2048 at 15:06 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 11 October 2048 at 04:52 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 404 231 km (251 177 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2048. It is 1 177 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 180 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
1 day after descending node on 28 September 2048 at 18:16 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 October 2048 at 07:07 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 28 September 2048 at 11:46 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.189° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.082° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 October 2048 at 03:48 in ♐ Sagittarius.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 7 October 2048 at 17:45 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