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 26 September 2081 at 01:30 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 ∠4° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2081 after 22 days on 17 October 2081 at 20:50.
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 1.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1883" and ∠1914".
The Moon is 21 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 1010 of Meeus index or 1963 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 22 minutes and it is 1 hour and 19 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 4 hours and 22 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 47 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 ∠357.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠12.5°.
8 days since point of apogee on 17 September 2081 at 08:20 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 October 2081 at 23:44 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 380 559 km (236 468 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 089 km (222 506 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 17 September 2081 at 06:18 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 1 October 2081 at 01:46 in ♍ Virgo.
At 14:31 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠28.512°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-28.464° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 8 October 2081 at 03:37.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 2 October 2081 at 17:23 in ♎ Libra 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