First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 22 September 2012 at 19:41 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 ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2012 after 7 days on 30 September 2012 at 03:19.
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 2.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1964" and ∠1912".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 157 of Meeus index or 1110 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 52 minutes and it is 13 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2012. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit 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 52 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 17 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 ∠312.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠334.3°.
3 days since point of perigee on 19 September 2012 at 02:52 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 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 5 October 2012 at 00:43 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 365 041 km (226 826 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 162 km (251 756 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 20 September 2012 at 12:54 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 4 October 2012 at 05:15 in ♉ Taurus.
At 00:11 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-21.135°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠21.024° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 6 October 2012 at 01:40.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 30 September 2012 at 03:19 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