First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 16 October 2018 at 18:02 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 ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2018 after 7 days on 24 October 2018 at 16:45.
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 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1926".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 232 of Meeus index or 1185 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 15 minutes and it is 3 hours and 3 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 29 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 40 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 ∠49.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠79.7°.
Moon is at apogee at 19:16 about 11 days since last perigee on 5 October 2018 at 22:29 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 31 October 2018 at 20:05 in ♌ Leo.
This apogee Moon is 404 227 km (251 175 mi) away from Earth. It is 1 181 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 482 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
Moon is in descending node in ♒ Aquarius at 12:03 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 31 October 2018 at 03:46 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 15 October 2018 at 17:26 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.154° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.292° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 October 2018 at 18:34 in ♋ Cancer.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 24 October 2018 at 16:45 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