First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 61% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 29 August 2017 at 08:13 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 ∠20° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2017 after 6 days on 6 September 2017 at 07:03.
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 7.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 218 of Meeus index or 1171 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 1 minute and it is 2 hours and 42 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 1 hour and 44 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 25 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 ∠49.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠79°.
Moon is at apogee at 11:25 about 11 days since last perigee on 18 August 2017 at 13:14 in ♋ Cancer 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 13 September 2017 at 16:04 in ♊ Gemini.
This apogee Moon is 404 307 km (251 225 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2017. It is 1 101 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 256 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
9 days after ascending node on 21 August 2017 at 10:34 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 4 September 2017 at 18:41 in ♒ Aquarius.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 18 August 2017 at 06:50 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.381° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-19.393° at the point of next southern standstill on 1 September 2017 at 02:03 in ♑ Capricorn.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 6 September 2017 at 07:03 in ♓ Pisces 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