First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 58% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 4 September 2011 at 17:39 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 ∠22° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2011 after 6 days on 12 September 2011 at 09:27.
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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1915" and ∠1903".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 144 of Meeus index or 1097 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 5 minutes and it is 42 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2011. 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 4 hours and 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 30 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 ∠333.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠350.1°.
5 days since point of perigee on 30 August 2011 at 17:35 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 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 15 September 2011 at 06:23 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 374 236 km (232 539 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 068 km (252 319 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 07:36 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 19 September 2011 at 19:38 in ♊ Gemini.
At 05:01 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-23.047°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠22.890° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 19 September 2011 at 20:05.
At 07:36 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 6 days on 12 September 2011 at 09:27 in ♓ Pisces 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