First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 63% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 9 October 2016 at 04:33 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 passing first ∠3° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2016 after 5 days on 16 October 2016 at 04:23.
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 3.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1848" and ∠1922".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 207 of Meeus index or 1160 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 27 minutes and it is 1 hour and 13 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 4 hours and 43 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 20 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 ∠144.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠170.6°.
6 days since point of apogee on 4 October 2016 at 11:02 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 16 October 2016 at 23:36 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 387 791 km (240 962 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 860 km (222 364 mi).
11 days after ascending node on 28 September 2016 at 22:06 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 13 October 2016 at 09:43 in ♓ Pisces.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 8 October 2016 at 06:03 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.546° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.619° at the point of next northern standstill on 20 October 2016 at 23:38 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 days on 16 October 2016 at 04:23 in ♈ Aries 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
