Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 24 December 2051 at 23:21 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 ∠9° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2052 after 21 days on 16 January 2052 at 04:24.
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 9.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1780" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 642 of Meeus index or 1595 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 29 minutes and it is 2 hours and 4 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 4 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 18 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 ∠214.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠248.4°.
9 days since point of perigee on 15 December 2051 at 19:57 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 December 2051 at 16:05 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 402 593 km (250 160 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 014 km (251 664 mi).
12 days after descending node on 13 December 2051 at 08:09 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 December 2051 at 10:39 in ♎ Libra.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 17 December 2051 at 14:21 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.789° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.780° at the point of next southern standstill on 31 December 2051 at 19:43 in ♐ Sagittarius.
26 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 2 January 2052 at 03:05 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