First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 29 October 2006 at 21:25 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 ∠15° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2006 after 6 days on 5 November 2006 at 12:58.
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 0.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1942" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 84 of Meeus index or 1037 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 4 minutes and it is 1 hour and 21 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 4 hours and 20 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 43 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 ∠207.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠238.7°.
11 days since point of apogee on 19 October 2006 at 09:35 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 3 November 2006 at 23:50 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 369 116 km (229 358 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 598 km (224 065 mi).
11 days after descending node on 19 October 2006 at 09:34 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 2 November 2006 at 06:55 in ♓ Pisces.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 27 October 2006 at 02:05 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.595° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.531° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 November 2006 at 17:58 in ♊ Gemini.
24 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 5 November 2006 at 12:58 in ♉ Taurus 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