First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 4 October 2011 at 03:15 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 ∠15° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2011 after 7 days on 12 October 2011 at 02:06.
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 2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1881" and ∠1918".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 145 of Meeus index or 1098 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 47 minutes and it is 1 hour and 27 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 3 hours and 57 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 12 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 ∠350.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠5.3°.
6 days since point of perigee on 28 September 2011 at 01:01 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 12 October 2011 at 11:43 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 381 057 km (236 778 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 435 km (252 547 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 2 October 2011 at 09:09 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 October 2011 at 21:01 in ♊ Gemini.
2 days since the last southern standstill on 2 October 2011 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.791° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠22.665° at the point of next northern standstill on 17 October 2011 at 02:06 in ♊ Gemini.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 12 October 2011 at 02:06 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