First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 3 January 2020 at 04:45 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 ∠16° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2020 after 7 days on 10 January 2020 at 19:21.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 9.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1773" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 247 of Meeus index or 1200 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour 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 3 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 18 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 ∠82.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠120.5°.
1 day since point of apogee on 2 January 2020 at 01:30 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 13 January 2020 at 20:20 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 404 300 km (251 220 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 365 964 km (227 399 mi).
7 days after descending node on 26 December 2019 at 13:01 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 9 January 2020 at 23:29 in ♋ Cancer.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 26 December 2019 at 20:11 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.227° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.223° at the point of next northern standstill on 10 January 2020 at 06:03 in ♋ Cancer.
20 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 7 days on 10 January 2020 at 19:21 in ♋ Cancer 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