Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 44% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 9 January 2056 at 23:13 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♏ Scorpio later.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2056 after 22 days on 1 February 2056 at 12:36.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 692 of Meeus index or 1645 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 55 minutes and it is 1 hour and 54 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 11 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 52 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 ∠45.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠75.8°.
Moon is at perigee at 16:48 about 14 days since last apogee on 27 December 2055 at 05:00 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 24 January 2056 at 02:22 in ♈ Aries.
This perigee Moon is 370 190 km (230 025 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2056. It is 7 682 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 166 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 4 January 2056 at 07:42 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 17 January 2056 at 06:04 in ♒ Aquarius.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 2 January 2056 at 21:00 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.189° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.177° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 January 2056 at 19:49 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 16 January 2056 at 22:10 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