First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 59% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 30 April 2001 at 17:08 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 about ∠22° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2001 after 6 days on 7 May 2001 at 13:53.
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 3.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1904".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 16 of Meeus index or 969 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes and it is 2 hours and 8 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 24 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 45 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠267.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠299.7°.
14 days since point of apogee on 17 April 2001 at 06:06 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 2 May 2001 at 03:37 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 363 345 km (225 772 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 426 km (229 551 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 28 April 2001 at 09:43 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 11 May 2001 at 11:02 in ♑ Capricorn.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 28 April 2001 at 16:18 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.248° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.329° at the point of next southern standstill on 11 May 2001 at 20:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
3 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 7 May 2001 at 13:53 in ♏ Scorpio 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