First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 27 December 2006 at 14:48 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 ∠4° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2007 after 7 days on 3 January 2007 at 13:57.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 86 of Meeus index or 1039 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 46 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 1 hour and 16 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 47 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 ∠276.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠308.6°.
13 days since point of apogee on 13 December 2006 at 18:55 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 December 2006 at 01:48 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 363 332 km (225 764 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 370 321 km (230 107 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 26 December 2006 at 10:36 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 8 January 2007 at 17:44 in ♍ Virgo.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 20 December 2006 at 13:40 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.378° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.396° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 January 2007 at 11:57 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 3 January 2007 at 13:57 in ♋ Cancer 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