First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 24 March 2018 at 15:35 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 ∠2° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2018 after 7 days on 31 March 2018 at 12:37.
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 2.4% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1924".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 225 of Meeus index or 1178 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 46 minutes and it is 2 hours and 55 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 2 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 7 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠262.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠296.5°.
13 days since point of apogee on 11 March 2018 at 09:13 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 26 March 2018 at 17:17 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 363 820 km (226 067 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 104 km (229 351 mi).
10 days after descending node on 14 March 2018 at 03:48 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 27 March 2018 at 10:56 in ♌ Leo.
13 days since the last southern standstill on 11 March 2018 at 06:39 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.112° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠20.210° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 March 2018 at 02:04 in ♋ Cancer.
24 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 7 days on 31 March 2018 at 12:37 in ♎ Libra 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