First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 13 December 2010 at 13:59 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 ∠20° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2010 after 7 days on 21 December 2010 at 08:13.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 135 of Meeus index or 1088 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 27 minutes and it is 2 hours and 1 minute 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 2 hours and 43 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 20 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 ∠67° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠103.5°.
Moon is at apogee at 08:34 about 12 days since last perigee on 30 November 2010 at 19:09 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 25 December 2010 at 12:24 in ♌ Leo.
This apogee Moon is 404 408 km (251 287 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 000 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 301 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 7 December 2010 at 04:15 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 December 2010 at 14:08 in ♊ Gemini.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 6 December 2010 at 02:10 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-24.233° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.238° at the point of next northern standstill on 20 December 2010 at 12:37 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 7 days on 21 December 2010 at 08:13 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