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 6 January 2078 at 05:04 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 ∠8° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2078 after 22 days on 28 January 2078 at 01:33.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1769" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 964 of Meeus index or 1917 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 8 minutes and it is 2 hours and 23 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 2 hours and 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 39 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 ∠258.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠294.9°.
11 days since point of perigee on 25 December 2077 at 02:40 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 6 January 2078 at 08:03 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 405 141 km (251 743 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 319 km (251 232 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 26 December 2077 at 14:03 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 9 January 2078 at 15:53 in ♏ Scorpio.
7 days since the last northern standstill on 29 December 2077 at 11:30 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.449° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.463° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 January 2078 at 21:22 in ♑ Capricorn.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 14 January 2078 at 01:14 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