First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 62% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 23 March 2010 at 11:00 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 ∠17° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2010 after 5 days on 30 March 2010 at 02:25.
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 1.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1957" and ∠1924".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 126 of Meeus index or 1079 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 28 minutes and it is 2 hours and 53 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 2 hours and 44 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 19 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 ∠215.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠247.4°.
12 days since point of apogee on 12 March 2010 at 10:07 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 March 2010 at 04:56 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 366 199 km (227 546 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 877 km (224 860 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♋ Cancer at 13:05 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 6 April 2010 at 09:45 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 22 March 2010 at 12:15 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.420° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.311° at the point of next southern standstill on 4 April 2010 at 05:23 in ♐ Sagittarius.
14 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 5 days on 30 March 2010 at 02:25 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