Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 42% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 12 December 2063 at 18:49 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 first ∠1° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2064 after 21 days on 4 January 2064 at 09:31.
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% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1969" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 790 of Meeus index or 1743 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 54 minutes and it is 2 hours and 39 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 10 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 53 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 ∠55.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠88.4°.
1 day since point of perigee on 11 December 2063 at 13:44 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 17 December 2063 at 19:22 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 364 002 km (226 180 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 177 km (223 804 mi).
2 days after descending node on 11 December 2063 at 02:54 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 December 2063 at 11:46 in ♒ Aquarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 6 December 2063 at 16:08 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.761° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.752° at the point of next southern standstill on 19 December 2063 at 14:21 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 19 December 2063 at 20:04 in ♐ Sagittarius 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