First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 12 September 2013 at 17:08 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 ∠17° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2013 after 6 days on 19 September 2013 at 11:13.
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 3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1965" and ∠1907".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 169 of Meeus index or 1122 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 58 minutes and it is 43 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 14 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 49 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 ∠249.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠285.3°.
12 days since point of apogee on 30 August 2013 at 23:46 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 September 2013 at 16:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 364 813 km (226 684 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 388 km (228 284 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 9 September 2013 at 17:29 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 22 September 2013 at 13:48 in ♉ Taurus.
At 18:30 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-19.685°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠19.599° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 26 September 2013 at 01:03.
2 days 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 6 days on 19 September 2013 at 11:13 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.
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