First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 27 August 2009 at 11:42 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 ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2009 after 8 days on 4 September 2009 at 16:03.
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 5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1806" and ∠1899".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 119 of Meeus index or 1072 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 43 minutes and it is 2 hours and 6 minutes shorter 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 4 hours and 1 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 8 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 ∠20.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠39.3°.
8 days since point of perigee on 19 August 2009 at 04:53 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 31 August 2009 at 11:04 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 396 873 km (246 605 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 269 km (251 822 mi).
8 days after descending node on 18 August 2009 at 14:06 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 September 2009 at 03:18 in ♑ Capricorn.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 15 August 2009 at 21:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.442° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-26.391° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 August 2009 at 20:17 in ♐ Sagittarius.
22 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 4 September 2009 at 16:03 in ♓ Pisces 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