First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 62% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 31 January 2012 at 04:10 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 ∠4° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♊ Gemini later.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2012 after 6 days on 7 February 2012 at 21:54.
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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1775" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 149 of Meeus index or 1102 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 55 minutes and it is 1 hour and 8 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 2 hours and 11 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 52 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 ∠70.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠107.8°.
1 day since point of apogee on 30 January 2012 at 17:42 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 11 February 2012 at 18:32 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 403 909 km (250 977 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 920 km (228 615 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 19 January 2012 at 18:26 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 2 February 2012 at 20:02 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 20 January 2012 at 02:12 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.492° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠22.404° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 February 2012 at 07:11 in ♊ Gemini.
12 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 6 days on 7 February 2012 at 21:54 in ♌ Leo 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