First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 61% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 4 December 2019 at 06:58 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 ∠4° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♈ Aries later.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2019 after 6 days on 12 December 2019 at 05:12.
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 9.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 246 of Meeus index or 1199 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 8 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 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 1 hour and 23 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 39 minutes 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 ∠50.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠82.6°.
Moon is at apogee at 04:09 about 11 days since last perigee on 23 November 2019 at 07:54 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next perigee on 18 December 2019 at 20:30 in ♍ Virgo.
This apogee Moon is 404 447 km (251 312 mi) away from Earth. It is 961 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 262 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
6 days after descending node on 29 November 2019 at 04:13 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 13 December 2019 at 14:15 in ♋ Cancer.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 29 November 2019 at 10:36 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.200° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.226° at the point of next northern standstill on 13 December 2019 at 20:57 in ♋ Cancer.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 12 December 2019 at 05:12 in ♊ Gemini 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