First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 25 May 2015 at 17:19 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 ∠13° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2015 after 7 days on 2 June 2015 at 16:19.
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 6.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1894".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 190 of Meeus index or 1143 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 52 minutes and it is 1 hour and 27 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 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 ∠48.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠78.1°.
Moon is at apogee at 22:12 about 11 days since last perigee on 15 May 2015 at 00:23 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 10 June 2015 at 04:39 in ♓ Pisces.
This apogee Moon is 404 246 km (251 187 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 162 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 463 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
11 days after descending node on 14 May 2015 at 20:37 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 May 2015 at 14:40 in ♎ Libra.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 20 May 2015 at 09:41 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.389° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-18.440° at the point of next southern standstill on 3 June 2015 at 21:10 in ♐ Sagittarius.
25 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 2 June 2015 at 16:19 in ♐ Sagittarius 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