First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 58% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 3 July 2006 at 16:37 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 ∠21° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2006 after 6 days on 11 July 2006 at 03:02.
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 5.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1784" and ∠1887".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 80 of Meeus index or 1033 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 26 minutes and it is 2 hours and 13 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 18 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 51 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 ∠97.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠131.2°.
2 days since point of apogee on 1 July 2006 at 20:12 in ♍ Virgo 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 13 July 2006 at 17:35 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 401 666 km (249 584 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 287 km (226 357 mi).
1 day after descending node on 2 July 2006 at 14:19 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 15 July 2006 at 20:25 in ♓ Pisces.
9 days since the last northern standstill on 25 June 2006 at 08:40 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.444° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.477° at the point of next southern standstill on 9 July 2006 at 18:49 in ♐ Sagittarius.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 11 July 2006 at 03:02 in ♑ Capricorn 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