First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 63% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 28 September 2017 at 02:54 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 ∠22° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2017 after 6 days on 5 October 2017 at 18:40.
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 7.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1779" and ∠1916".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 219 of Meeus index or 1172 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 42 minutes and it is 2 hours and 48 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 58 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 5 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 ∠79° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠114.6°.
2 days since point of apogee on 27 September 2017 at 06:49 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 9 October 2017 at 05:51 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 402 999 km (250 412 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 366 858 km (227 955 mi).
11 days after ascending node on 17 September 2017 at 18:28 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 2 October 2017 at 02:05 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 28 September 2017 at 10:06 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-19.516° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠19.616° at the point of next northern standstill on 11 October 2017 at 18:21 in ♋ Cancer.
11 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 5 October 2017 at 18:40 in ♈ Aries 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