First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 7 December 2016 at 09:03 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 ∠17° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2016 after 6 days on 14 December 2016 at 00:06.
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 1.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1915" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 209 of Meeus index or 1162 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 35 minutes and it is 1 hour and 21 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 5 hours and 51 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 12 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 ∠194.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠223.4°.
9 days since point of apogee on 27 November 2016 at 20:08 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 12 December 2016 at 23:27 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 374 375 km (232 626 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 463 km (222 739 mi).
1 day after descending node on 6 December 2016 at 17:35 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 December 2016 at 04:46 in ♍ Virgo.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 1 December 2016 at 19:56 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.908° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.937° at the point of next northern standstill on 14 December 2016 at 21:43 in ♊ Gemini.
15 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 6 days on 14 December 2016 at 00:06 in ♊ Gemini 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