Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 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 about ∠12° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2048 after 21 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 7.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1771" and ∠1917".
The Moon is 22 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°.
1 day since point of apogee on 29 September 2048 at 06:20 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 11 October 2048 at 04:52 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 404 628 km (251 424 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 366 937 km (228 004 mi).
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 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 October 2048 at 07:07 in ♐ Sagittarius.
2 days 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 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.082° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 October 2048 at 03:48 in ♐ Sagittarius.
15 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 7 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