First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 61% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 24 September 2001 at 09:31 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 ∠15° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2001 after 7 days on 2 October 2001 at 13:49.
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 6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1802" and ∠1914".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 21 of Meeus index or 974 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 56 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 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 3 hours and 48 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 21 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 ∠13.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠30.5°.
8 days since point of perigee on 16 September 2001 at 15:50 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 29 September 2001 at 05:33 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 397 818 km (247 193 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 791 km (252 147 mi).
1 day after descending node on 24 September 2001 at 10:28 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 8 October 2001 at 22:32 in ♊ Gemini.
At 05:14 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-23.780°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠23.937° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 9 October 2001 at 18:46.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 2 October 2001 at 13:49 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