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 1 October 2056 at 23:33 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 ∠16° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2056 after 20 days on 23 October 2056 at 11:46.
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 5.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1809" and ∠1918".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 701 of Meeus index or 1654 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 13 minutes and it is 7 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2056. 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 3 hours and 31 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 38 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 ∠317.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠337.6°.
4 days since point of apogee on 28 September 2056 at 07:58 in ♉ Taurus 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 10 October 2056 at 11:04 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 396 144 km (246 152 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 834 km (223 590 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♋ Cancer at 15:45 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next descending node later on 15 October 2056 at 06:24 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 03:51 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠22.376°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-22.495° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 14 October 2056 at 21:56.
At 15:45 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 6 days on 9 October 2056 at 03:00 in ♎ Libra 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