First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 15 September 2010 at 05:50 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 ∠4° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2010 after 7 days on 23 September 2010 at 09:17.
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 3.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1840" and ∠1908".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 132 of Meeus index or 1085 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 15 minutes and it is 1 hour and 52 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 29 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 40 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 ∠4.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠20.4°.
7 days since point of perigee on 8 September 2010 at 04:00 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 21 September 2010 at 08:03 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 389 493 km (242 020 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 169 km (252 382 mi).
11 days after descending node on 4 September 2010 at 00:16 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 16 September 2010 at 13:56 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 14 September 2010 at 23:47 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-24.710° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 14 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.555° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 September 2010 at 17:37 in ♊ Gemini.
25 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 23 September 2010 at 09:17 in ♈ Aries 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