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 2 April 2009 at 14:34 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 ∠11° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2009 after 7 days on 9 April 2009 at 14:56.
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 2.8% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1919".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 114 of Meeus index or 1067 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 17 minutes and it is 2 hours and 29 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 27 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 42 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 ∠282.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠311.7°.
Moon is at perigee at 02:31 about 13 days since last apogee on 19 March 2009 at 13:16 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 16 April 2009 at 09:15 in ♑ Capricorn.
This perigee Moon is 370 014 km (229 916 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2009. It is 7 506 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 342 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
11 days after ascending node on 22 March 2009 at 02:12 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 4 April 2009 at 07:22 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 1 April 2009 at 02:50 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.780° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.665° at the point of next southern standstill on 14 April 2009 at 13:02 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 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 9 April 2009 at 14:56 in ♎ Libra 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