First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 46% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 27 October 2017 at 22:22 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 first ∠0° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2017 after 7 days on 4 November 2017 at 05:23.
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 8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1782" and ∠1931".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 220 of Meeus index or 1173 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 30 minutes and it is 2 hours and 18 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 3 hours and 46 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 17 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 ∠114.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠147°.
2 days since point of apogee on 25 October 2017 at 02:25 in ♑ Capricorn 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 6 November 2017 at 00:09 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 402 134 km (249 874 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 9 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 438 km (224 587 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 14 October 2017 at 22:10 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 October 2017 at 06:41 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 25 October 2017 at 18:13 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-19.741° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠19.848° at the point of next northern standstill on 8 November 2017 at 01:28 in ♋ Cancer.
12 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 7 days on 4 November 2017 at 05:23 in ♉ Taurus 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