First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 60% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 18 December 2015 at 15:14 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 ∠9° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2015 after 5 days on 25 December 2015 at 11:11.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 197 of Meeus index or 1150 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 53 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 17 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 46 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 ∠255.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠292.2°.
13 days since point of apogee on 5 December 2015 at 14:56 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 December 2015 at 08:53 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 363 342 km (225 770 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 418 km (228 924 mi).
1 day after descending node on 18 December 2015 at 15:13 in ♓ Pisces 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 31 December 2015 at 20:19 in ♍ Virgo.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 12 December 2015 at 08:15 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.438° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.444° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 December 2015 at 07:30 in ♋ Cancer.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 days on 25 December 2015 at 11:11 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