First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 14 March 2008 at 10:46 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 ∠25° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2008 after 7 days on 21 March 2008 at 18:40.
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 1.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1962" and ∠1929".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 101 of Meeus index or 1054 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 41 minutes and it is 2 hours and 18 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 2 hours and 3 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 6 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 ∠310.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠332.7°.
3 days since point of perigee on 10 March 2008 at 21:39 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 26 March 2008 at 20:13 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 365 424 km (227 064 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 094 km (251 714 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 6 March 2008 at 06:52 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 19 March 2008 at 02:53 in ♌ Leo.
At 11:33 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠27.985°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-27.898° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 28 March 2008 at 16:00.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 21 March 2008 at 18:40 in ♍ Virgo 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