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 30 September 2006 at 11:04 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 ∠8° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2006 after 6 days on 7 October 2006 at 03:13.
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 1.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1889" and ∠1916".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 83 of Meeus index or 1036 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 29 minutes and it is 25 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2006. 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 4 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 18 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 ∠182.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠207.1°.
8 days since point of apogee on 22 September 2006 at 05:21 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 6 October 2006 at 14:07 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 379 499 km (235 810 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 410 km (222 084 mi).
8 days after descending node on 22 September 2006 at 03:42 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 October 2006 at 22:11 in ♓ Pisces.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 29 September 2006 at 20:31 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.712° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.678° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 October 2006 at 08:52 in ♊ Gemini.
22 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 7 October 2006 at 03:13 in ♈ Aries 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