First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 19 March 2013 at 17:27 UTC.
The moon rises at noon and sets at midnight. It is visible high in the southern sky in early evening.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is leaving the last ∠3° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2013 after 7 days on 27 March 2013 at 09:27.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 8.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1927".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 163 of Meeus index or 1116 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 44 minutes and it is 1 hour and 9 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 1 hour longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 3 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 ∠73.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠110.3°.
Moon is at apogee at 03:13 about 13 days since last perigee on 5 March 2013 at 23:20 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 11 days until point of next perigee on 31 March 2013 at 03:55 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 404 262 km (251 197 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2013. It is 1 146 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 211 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
3 days after descending node on 16 March 2013 at 06:15 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 March 2013 at 05:55 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 18 March 2013 at 21:50 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.335° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.250° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 April 2013 at 12:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 27 March 2013 at 09:27 in ♎ Libra the Moon is going to be in a Full Moon geocentric opposition with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Earth-Moon 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