First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 12 March 2011 at 23:45 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 ∠1° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2011 after 6 days on 19 March 2011 at 18:10.
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 3.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1870" and ∠1930".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 138 of Meeus index or 1091 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 46 minutes and it is 1 hour and 28 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 5 hours and 2 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠167° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠190.9°.
7 days since point of apogee on 6 March 2011 at 07:50 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 19 March 2011 at 19:09 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 383 334 km (238 193 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 578 km (221 567 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 11:55 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 25 March 2011 at 21:09 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 12 March 2011 at 17:06 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.825° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.716° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 March 2011 at 05:02 in ♐ Sagittarius.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 19 March 2011 at 18:10 in ♍ Virgo 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