Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 1 January 2073 at 03:27 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 ∠2° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2073 after 23 days on 23 January 2073 at 20:05.
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 ∠1972" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 902 of Meeus index or 1855 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 12 minutes and it is 2 hours and 18 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 2 hours and 28 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 35 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 ∠69° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠105.7°.
2 days since point of perigee on 29 December 2072 at 06:59 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 14 January 2073 at 02:24 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 363 494 km (225 865 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 891 km (251 588 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 29 December 2072 at 08:37 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 January 2073 at 18:17 in ♒ Aquarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 25 December 2072 at 11:40 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.089° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.079° at the point of next southern standstill on 7 January 2073 at 10:43 in ♑ Capricorn.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 8 January 2073 at 08:11 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