Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 58% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 16 January 2050 at 06:17 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 ∠17° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2050 after 22 days on 6 February 2050 at 20:47.
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 7.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1814" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 618 of Meeus index or 1571 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 5 minutes and it is 58 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 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 30 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 ∠332.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠350.1°.
4 days since point of apogee on 11 January 2050 at 02:36 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 23 January 2050 at 18:50 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 395 073 km (245 487 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 295 km (222 013 mi).
11 days after descending node on 4 January 2050 at 03:20 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 18 January 2050 at 17:33 in ♏ Scorpio.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 5 January 2050 at 16:08 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.260° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.179° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2050 at 05:15 in ♐ Sagittarius.
24 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 23 January 2050 at 04:57 in ♒ Aquarius 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