Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 29 October 2048 at 22:15 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 ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2048 after 21 days on 20 November 2048 at 11:20.
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% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1783" and ∠1932".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 603 of Meeus index or 1556 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 53 minutes and it is 1 minute 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 51 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 18 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 ∠307.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠330.6°.
2 days since point of apogee on 27 October 2048 at 01:59 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 7 November 2048 at 23:21 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 401 937 km (249 752 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 590 km (224 682 mi).
3 days after descending node on 25 October 2048 at 21:25 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 8 November 2048 at 12:22 in ♐ Sagittarius.
3 days since the last northern standstill on 25 October 2048 at 19:04 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.990° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.947° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 November 2048 at 11:15 in ♐ Sagittarius.
17 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 6 November 2048 at 04:38 in ♏ Scorpio 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