Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 5 January 2051 at 04:29 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 ∠7° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2051 after 22 days on 26 January 2051 at 21:20.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 630 of Meeus index or 1583 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 40 minutes and it is 1 hour and 57 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 56 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 7 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠282.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠313.4°.
Moon is at apogee at 00:04 about 14 days since last perigee on 20 December 2050 at 16:49 in ♓ Pisces 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 15 January 2051 at 18:23 in ♒ Aquarius.
This apogee Moon is 404 452 km (251 315 mi) away from Earth. It is 956 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 257 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after descending node on 24 December 2050 at 02:37 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 7 January 2051 at 05:43 in ♏ Scorpio.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 27 December 2050 at 00:57 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.815° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.761° at the point of next southern standstill on 10 January 2051 at 12:25 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 8 days on 12 January 2051 at 18:58 in ♑ Capricorn 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