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 16 September 2018 at 23:15 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 ∠18° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2018 after 8 days on 25 September 2018 at 02:53.
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 5.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1799" and ∠1909".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 231 of Meeus index or 1184 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 45 minutes and it is 2 hours and 30 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 2 hours and 59 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 10 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 ∠28° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠49.6°.
8 days since point of perigee on 8 September 2018 at 01:21 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 20 September 2018 at 00:54 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 398 465 km (247 595 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 3 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 875 km (251 578 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 6 September 2018 at 22:42 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 20 September 2018 at 09:30 in ♒ Aquarius.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 5 September 2018 at 06:56 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.837° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.909° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 September 2018 at 09:35 in ♑ Capricorn.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 8 days on 25 September 2018 at 02:53 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