First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 63% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 7 May 2014 at 03:15 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 first ∠3° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2014 after 6 days on 14 May 2014 at 19:16.
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 6.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1777" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 177 of Meeus index or 1130 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 26 minutes and it is 1 hour and 2 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 18 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 51 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 ∠76.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠112.5°.
2 days since point of apogee on 6 May 2014 at 10:22 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 18 May 2014 at 11:58 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 403 257 km (250 572 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 367 099 km (228 105 mi).
10 days after descending node on 28 April 2014 at 11:36 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 12 May 2014 at 22:06 in ♎ Libra.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 2 May 2014 at 15:59 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.961° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.992° at the point of next southern standstill on 16 May 2014 at 20:10 in ♐ Sagittarius.
22 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 14 May 2014 at 19:16 in ♏ Scorpio 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