First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 5 April 2006 at 12:01 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 ∠16° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2006 after 8 days on 13 April 2006 at 16:40.
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 5.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1808" and ∠1918".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 77 of Meeus index or 1030 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 29 minutes and it is 13 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2006. 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 15 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 54 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 ∠19° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠38.4°.
8 days since point of perigee on 28 March 2006 at 07:13 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 9 April 2006 at 13:16 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 396 412 km (246 319 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 551 km (251 998 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 29 March 2006 at 03:31 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 12 April 2006 at 02:35 in ♎ Libra.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 4 April 2006 at 07:35 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.715° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.668° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 April 2006 at 22:27 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 8 days on 13 April 2006 at 16:40 in ♎ Libra 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