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 1 March 2012 at 01:22 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 ∠16° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2012 after 6 days on 8 March 2012 at 09:40.
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 7.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1789" and ∠1936".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 150 of Meeus index or 1103 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 3 minutes and it is 38 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 18 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 44 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 ∠107.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠142.2°.
2 days since point of apogee on 27 February 2012 at 14:01 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 March 2012 at 10:02 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 400 679 km (248 970 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 8 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 362 401 km (225 186 mi).
1 day after descending node on 29 February 2012 at 22:37 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 13 March 2012 at 20:41 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 16:13 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠22.150°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-22.032° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 14 March 2012 at 14:09.
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 8 March 2012 at 09:40 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