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 02:28, until soon before it sets at 10:55.

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 384,000 km. Its celestial coordinates will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 18h54m10s 26°56'S Sagittarius 31'04"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 6 Nov 2024

The sky on 6 November 2024
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
16:30
Twilight ends
18:06
Twilight begins
04:45

5-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

26%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:18 12:48 17:19
Venus 09:48 14:10 18:31
Moon 11:40 15:47 19:57
Mars 21:23 04:52 12:20
Jupiter 18:24 01:55 09:27
Saturn 14:05 19:35 01:06
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

05 Apr 2268  –  Moon at Last Quarter
13 Apr 2268  –  New Moon
21 Apr 2268  –  Moon at First Quarter
27 Apr 2268  –  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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