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 26 October 2009 at 00:42 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 about ∠8° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2009 after 7 days on 2 November 2009 at 19:14.
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 8.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1931".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 121 of Meeus index or 1074 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 41 minutes and it is 3 hours and 7 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 57 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 6 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 ∠65.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠99.9°.
1 day since point of apogee on 25 October 2009 at 23:18 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 7 November 2009 at 07:30 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 405 379 km (251 891 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 900 km (229 224 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 25 October 2009 at 08:52 in ♑ Capricorn 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 7 November 2009 at 23:25 in ♋ Cancer.
3 days since the last southern standstill on 22 October 2009 at 12:10 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.951° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.856° at the point of next northern standstill on 5 November 2009 at 15:31 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 2 November 2009 at 19:14 in ♉ Taurus 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