First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 24 November 2009 at 21:39 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 ∠2° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♓ Pisces later.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2009 after 7 days on 2 December 2009 at 07:30.
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 9.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1775" and ∠1944".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 122 of Meeus index or 1075 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 48 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 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 4 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 59 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 ∠99.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠135.6°.
1 day since point of apogee on 22 November 2009 at 20:07 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 4 December 2009 at 14:12 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 403 790 km (250 903 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 479 km (225 855 mi).
3 days after ascending node on 21 November 2009 at 11:34 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 5 December 2009 at 03:18 in ♋ Cancer.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 18 November 2009 at 19:53 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.795° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.772° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 December 2009 at 23:37 in ♊ Gemini.
3 days 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 December 2009 at 07:30 in ♊ Gemini 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