First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 62% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 26 December 2017 at 09:20 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 ∠19° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 5 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24.
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 2.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1897" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 222 of Meeus index or 1175 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 47 minutes and it is 59 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2017. 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 7 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length and it is the longest synodic month length of 21st century.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠173.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠198.1°.
8 days since point of apogee on 19 December 2017 at 01:27 in ♑ Capricorn 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 1 January 2018 at 21:54 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 377 889 km (234 809 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 566 km (221 560 mi).
5 days after descending node on 22 December 2017 at 10:04 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 4 January 2018 at 07:48 in ♌ Leo.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 19 December 2017 at 09:31 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.062° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.055° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 January 2018 at 00:01 in ♋ Cancer.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 5 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24 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