First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 47% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 28 December 2014 at 18:31 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 ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2015 after 7 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53.
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 0.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1960" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 185 of Meeus index or 1138 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 38 minutes and it is 1 hour and 4 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 1 hour and 6 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 3 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 ∠318° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠338.3°.
3 days since point of perigee on 24 December 2014 at 16:43 in ♒ Aquarius 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 9 January 2015 at 18:17 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 365 767 km (227 277 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 411 km (251 911 mi).
11 days after ascending node on 16 December 2014 at 13:27 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 December 2014 at 09:27 in ♈ Aries.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 21 December 2014 at 18:25 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.665° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.650° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 January 2015 at 17:53 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53 in ♋ Cancer 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