Last Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 42% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 23 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Last Quarter phase is on 6 December 2096 at 16:07 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♎ Libra later.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2096 after 21 days on 29 December 2096 at 08:23.
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 5.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1837" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 23 days old and navigating through the last part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 1198 of Meeus index or 2151 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 30 minutes and it is 36 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2096. 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 6 hours and 46 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 17 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 ∠169.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠194.2°.
7 days since point of perigee on 29 November 2096 at 19:43 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 13 December 2096 at 05:28 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 390 095 km (242 394 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 437 km (252 548 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 28 November 2096 at 18:48 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 12 December 2096 at 02:27 in ♏ Scorpio.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 1 December 2096 at 20:29 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.962° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.929° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 December 2096 at 01:02 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 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 7 days on 14 December 2096 at 20:05 in ♐ Sagittarius 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