Last Quarter Moon
Change · Reconsideration · Transition
The Last Quarter Moon — also called the Third Quarter Moon — appears about seven days before the next New Moon, marking three-quarters of the way through the lunar cycle and looking exactly half-illuminated, lit on the left side in the Northern Hemisphere (right in the Southern Hemisphere). Unlike its counterpart, the first quarter, the last quarter rises around midnight and sets around midday, which puts its best visibility in the pre-dawn hours rather than the evening — it's the half-Moon most people miss simply because they're asleep when it's highest in the sky. It sits in the waning half of the cycle, with illumination decreasing from here through waning crescent until it disappears entirely at New Moon roughly a week later. The terms "Last Quarter" and "Third Quarter" are used interchangeably and refer to the same phase; neither is more correct, though "Last Quarter" is more common in everyday use and "Third Quarter" appears more often in technical almanacs.














