Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

Moon at Last Quarter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed

Objects: The Moon
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The sky at

The Moon will pass last quarter phase, rising in the middle of the night and appearing prominent in the pre-dawn sky.

From Cambridge, it will be visible from soon after it rises, at 00:52, until soon before it sets at 10:05.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

At this time in its monthly cycle of phases, it appears almost exactly half illuminated.

The Moon orbits the Earth once every four weeks, causing its phases to cycle through new moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter, and back to new moon once every 29.5 days.

As it progresses through this cycle, it is visible at different times of day. At last quarter, it rises in the middle of the night and appears high in the sky by dawn. It sets at around lunchtime. More information about the Moon's phases is available here.

The exact moment of last quarter

The exact moment of last quarter is defined as the time when the Moon's ecliptic longitude is exactly 90° away from the Sun's ecliptic longitude, as observed from the center of the Earth. However, the Moon does not appear in any way special at this instant in time, and a last quarter moon can be observed at any time in the pre-dawn sky.

At the moment it reaches last quarter, the Moon's distance from the Earth will be 382,000 km. Its celestial coordinates will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 15h15m40s 22°01'S Libra 31'15"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 11 Dec 2024

The sky on 11 December 2024
Sunrise
07:01
Sunset
16:11
Twilight ends
17:52
Twilight begins
05:19

10-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

84%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:55 10:46 15:36
Venus 10:11 14:51 19:31
Moon 13:25 20:28 03:45
Mars 19:28 02:57 10:26
Jupiter 15:45 23:15 06:45
Saturn 11:48 17:20 22:51
All times shown in EST.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

12 Feb 2099  –  Moon at Last Quarter
19 Feb 2099  –  New Moon
28 Feb 2099  –  Moon at First Quarter
06 Mar 2099  –  Full Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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Cambridge

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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