First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 22 April 2018 at 21:46 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2018 after 7 days on 30 April 2018 at 00:58.
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 3.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1908".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 226 of Meeus index or 1179 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 51 minutes and it is 1 hour and 56 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 hours and 53 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 16 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 ∠296.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠321.7°.
1 day since point of perigee on 20 April 2018 at 14:44 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 6 May 2018 at 00:35 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 363 492 km (225 863 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 458 km (251 319 mi).
12 days after descending node on 10 April 2018 at 08:09 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 23 April 2018 at 12:19 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 21 April 2018 at 07:38 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.445° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.562° at the point of next southern standstill on 4 May 2018 at 23:00 in ♑ Capricorn.
26 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 30 April 2018 at 00:58 in ♏ Scorpio 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