First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 16 May 2005 at 08:56 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 ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2005 after 7 days on 23 May 2005 at 20:18.
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 6.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1777" and ∠1897".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 66 of Meeus index or 1019 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 10 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 26 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 37 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 ∠96.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠131.2°.
1 day since point of apogee on 14 May 2005 at 13:41 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 May 2005 at 10:43 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 403 356 km (250 634 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 241 km (226 329 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 6 May 2005 at 10:56 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 20 May 2005 at 22:02 in ♎ Libra.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 12 May 2005 at 00:42 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.317° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.270° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 May 2005 at 23:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
10 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 23 May 2005 at 20:18 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