First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 58% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 24 December 2009 at 17:36 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 ∠13° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2009 after 6 days on 31 December 2009 at 19:13.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 6.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1824" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 123 of Meeus index or 1076 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 9 minutes and it is 31 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2009. 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 6 hours and 25 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 38 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 ∠135.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠164.3°.
4 days since point of apogee on 20 December 2009 at 14:54 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2010 at 20:36 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 392 925 km (244 152 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 684 km (222 876 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 18 December 2009 at 16:41 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 1 January 2010 at 12:30 in ♋ Cancer.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 16 December 2009 at 02:38 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.769° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.787° at the point of next northern standstill on 30 December 2009 at 10:09 in ♊ Gemini.
6 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 6 days on 31 December 2009 at 19:13 in ♋ Cancer 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