First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 20 May 2010 at 23:43 UTC.
The moon rises in the morning and sets in the evening. It is visible toward the southwest 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 ∠23° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2010 after 7 days on 27 May 2010 at 23:07.
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 4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 128 of Meeus index or 1081 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 10 minutes and it is 1 hour and 44 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 34 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 35 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 ∠282.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠311.3°.
Moon is at perigee at 08:38 about 13 days since last apogee on 6 May 2010 at 21:53 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 3 June 2010 at 16:50 in ♒ Aquarius.
This perigee Moon is 369 729 km (229 739 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2010. It is 7 221 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 627 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
2 days after descending node on 17 May 2010 at 15:39 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 May 2010 at 18:07 in ♑ Capricorn.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 15 May 2010 at 23:07 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.049° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.029° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 May 2010 at 22:09 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 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 7 days on 27 May 2010 at 23:07 in ♏ Scorpio 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