First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 27 January 2015 at 04:48 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 ∠11° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2015 after 7 days on 3 February 2015 at 23:09.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 1.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1915" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 186 of Meeus index or 1139 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 34 minutes and it is 45 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 2 hours and 10 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 59 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 ∠338.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠354.5°.
5 days since point of perigee on 21 January 2015 at 20:06 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 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 6 February 2015 at 06:25 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 374 245 km (232 545 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 155 km (252 373 mi).
2 days after descending node on 25 January 2015 at 10:23 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 8 February 2015 at 17:10 in ♎ Libra.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 18 January 2015 at 06:17 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.577° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.513° at the point of next northern standstill on 31 January 2015 at 00:59 in ♋ Cancer.
14 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 7 days on 3 February 2015 at 23:09 in ♌ Leo 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