First
Quarter ♐ Sagittarius
First Quarter is the lunar phase on . Seen from Earth, illuminated fraction of the Moon surface is 49% and growing larger. The 7 days young Moon is in ♐ Sagittarius.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 24 August 2012 at 13:54 UTC.
Saturday Sat
Sunday Sun
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Thursday Thu
Friday Fri
Moon rises at noon and sets at midnight. It is visible high in the southern sky in early evening.
Moon is passing first ∠1° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Lunar disc appears visually 3.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1898".
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2012 after 7 days on 31 August 2012 at 13:58.
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.
The Moon is 7 days young. Earth's natural satellite is moving through the first part of current synodic month. This is lunation 156 of Meeus index or 1109 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 16 minutes. It is 24 minutes longer than the next lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decreasing with the 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 2 hours and 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 41 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
At the beginning of the lunation cycle the true anomaly is ∠283.7°. At the beginning of next synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠312.9°.
1 day after point of perigee on 23 August 2012 at 19:39 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 13 days, until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 7 September 2012 at 06:00 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 363 323 km (225 758 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 296 km (251 218 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 11:38 crossing the ecliptic from South to North to meet descending node 13 days later on 7 September 2012 at 02:08 in ♉ Taurus.
At 11:38 the Moon completes the previous draconic month and enters the new one.
12 days since the previous standstill on 12 August 2012 at 09:47 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.492°, the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-21.379° at the point of next southern standstill on 25 August 2012 at 18:40 in ♐ Sagittarius.
In 7 days on 31 August 2012 at 13:58 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.