First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 12 May 2008 at 03:47 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2008 after 7 days on 20 May 2008 at 02:11.
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 0.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1884" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 103 of Meeus index or 1056 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 4 minutes and it is 8 minutes longer 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 5 hours and 40 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 29 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 ∠349.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠4.4°.
6 days since point of perigee on 6 May 2008 at 03:22 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 20 May 2008 at 14:27 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 380 472 km (236 414 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 404 km (252 528 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♌ Leo at 06:37 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 26 May 2008 at 21:45 in ♒ Aquarius.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 8 May 2008 at 01:51 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.625° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.542° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 May 2008 at 04:00 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 20 May 2008 at 02:11 in ♏ Scorpio 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