Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 22 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 21 July 2068 at 17:22 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 ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♉ Taurus later.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2068 after 22 days on 13 August 2068 at 09:51.
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 3.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1956" and ∠1889".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 847 of Meeus index or 1800 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 43 minutes and it is 1 hour and 51 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 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 8 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 ∠99.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠133.3°.
3 days since point of perigee on 17 July 2068 at 14:05 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 August 2068 at 08:59 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 366 473 km (227 716 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 607 km (252 033 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 11 July 2068 at 06:33 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 23 July 2068 at 23:15 in ♉ Taurus.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 12 July 2068 at 14:18 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.401° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.350° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 July 2068 at 08:58 in ♊ Gemini.
10 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 29 July 2068 at 03:55 in ♌ Leo 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