First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 16 April 2005 at 14:37 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 ∠25° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2005 after 7 days on 24 April 2005 at 10:06.
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 7.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1912".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 65 of Meeus index or 1018 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 13 minutes and it is 57 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 31 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 38 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 ∠62.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠96.6°.
Moon is at apogee at 18:41 about 12 days since last perigee on 4 April 2005 at 11:10 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 29 April 2005 at 09:59 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 404 304 km (251 223 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2005. It is 1 104 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 253 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
7 days after ascending node on 9 April 2005 at 02:59 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 23 April 2005 at 13:30 in ♎ Libra.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 14 April 2005 at 16:38 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.381° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.359° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 April 2005 at 15:55 in ♐ Sagittarius.
7 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 24 April 2005 at 10:06 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