First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 62% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 8 December 2005 at 09:36 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 ∠2° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2005 after 6 days on 15 December 2005 at 16:16.
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 0.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1952" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 73 of Meeus index or 1026 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 11 minutes and it is 1 hour 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 33 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 36 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 ∠306.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠329.9°.
4 days since point of perigee on 5 December 2005 at 04:32 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 21 December 2005 at 02:49 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 367 123 km (228 120 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 014 km (251 664 mi).
12 days after descending node on 27 November 2005 at 07:13 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 10 December 2005 at 04:50 in ♈ Aries.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 3 December 2005 at 04:51 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.415° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.378° at the point of next northern standstill on 16 December 2005 at 07:14 in ♋ Cancer.
26 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 15 December 2005 at 16:16 in ♊ Gemini 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