Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 21 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 5 February 2078 at 03:00 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 ∠9° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2078 after 22 days on 26 February 2078 at 17:50.
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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1772" and ∠1946".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 965 of Meeus index or 1918 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 45 minutes and it is 2 hours and 6 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 1 minute longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 7 hours and 2 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 ∠294.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠321.6°.
1 day since point of apogee on 3 February 2078 at 05:07 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 14 February 2078 at 23:02 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 404 387 km (251 274 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 913 km (226 125 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 22 January 2078 at 17:10 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 5 February 2078 at 19:13 in ♏ Scorpio.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 25 January 2078 at 19:02 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.499° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.587° at the point of next southern standstill on 9 February 2078 at 06:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
12 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 12 February 2078 at 13:59 in ♒ Aquarius 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