First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 58% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 15 March 2016 at 17:03 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 ∠6° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2016 after 7 days on 23 March 2016 at 12:01.
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 1.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1900" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 200 of Meeus index or 1153 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour and 23 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 3 hours and 15 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 54 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 ∠339.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠355.6°.
6 days since point of perigee on 10 March 2016 at 07:02 in ♈ Aries 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 25 March 2016 at 14:16 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 377 198 km (234 380 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 125 km (252 354 mi).
7 days after descending node on 9 March 2016 at 06:31 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 22 March 2016 at 12:59 in ♍ Virgo.
At 05:01 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠18.206°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2016. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-18.239° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 30 March 2016 at 22:12.
21 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 7 days on 23 March 2016 at 12:01 in ♎ Libra 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