First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 60% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 2 December 2011 at 09:52 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 ∠23° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2011 after 7 days on 10 December 2011 at 14:36.
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 8.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1786" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 147 of Meeus index or 1100 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 57 minutes and it is 1 hour and 36 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 47 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 22 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 ∠21.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠42.1°.
9 days since point of perigee on 23 November 2011 at 23:24 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 6 December 2011 at 01:13 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 401 334 km (249 377 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 414 km (251 913 mi).
7 days after ascending node on 26 November 2011 at 01:02 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 10 December 2011 at 07:04 in ♊ Gemini.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 26 November 2011 at 06:47 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.552° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠22.554° at the point of next northern standstill on 10 December 2011 at 13:37 in ♊ Gemini.
7 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 10 December 2011 at 14:36 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