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 28 November 2048 at 16:34 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 ∠5° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2048 after 21 days on 20 December 2048 at 06:39.
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 6.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1821" and ∠1945".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 604 of Meeus index or 1557 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 52 minutes and it is 2 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2048. 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 52 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 17 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 ∠330.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠348.2°.
4 days since point of apogee on 23 November 2048 at 18:24 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 6 December 2048 at 07:58 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 393 582 km (244 561 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 717 km (222 275 mi).
6 days after descending node on 22 November 2048 at 02:54 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 December 2048 at 22:27 in ♐ Sagittarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 22 November 2048 at 01:41 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠22.917° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-22.922° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 December 2048 at 21:34 in ♐ Sagittarius.
19 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 5 December 2048 at 15:30 in ♐ Sagittarius 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