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 5 January 2017 at 19:47 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 ∠25° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2017 after 5 days on 12 January 2017 at 11:34.
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 0.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1959" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 210 of Meeus index or 1163 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 14 minutes and it is 2 hours 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 4 hours and 30 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 33 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 ∠223.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠259.5°.
12 days since point of apogee on 25 December 2016 at 05:55 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 January 2017 at 06:07 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 365 853 km (227 331 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 242 km (225 708 mi).
3 days after descending node on 2 January 2017 at 18:14 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 15 January 2017 at 10:45 in ♍ Virgo.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 29 December 2016 at 03:30 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.958° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.932° at the point of next northern standstill on 11 January 2017 at 09:32 in ♋ Cancer.
18 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 12 January 2017 at 11:34 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