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 17 September 2071 at 01:07 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 ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2071 after 21 days on 9 October 2071 at 05:23.
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 2.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1959" and ∠1909".
The Moon is 22 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 886 of Meeus index or 1839 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 5 minutes and it is 2 hours and 23 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 3 hours and 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 30 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 ∠21.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠40.7°.
12 days since point of apogee on 5 September 2071 at 06:50 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 September 2071 at 04:01 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 365 850 km (227 329 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 336 km (226 388 mi).
7 days after descending node on 10 September 2071 at 12:00 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 23 September 2071 at 12:38 in ♍ Virgo.
At 12:25 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠18.143°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2071. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-18.146° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 30 September 2071 at 13:52.
21 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 23 September 2071 at 17:21 in ♍ Virgo 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