First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 64% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 9 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 2 February 2020 at 01:42 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 ∠0° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2020 after 5 days on 9 February 2020 at 07:33.
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 6.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1818" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 9 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 248 of Meeus index or 1201 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 50 minutes and it is 6 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 5 hours and 6 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 57 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 ∠120.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠152.6°.
4 days since point of apogee on 29 January 2020 at 21:28 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 February 2020 at 20:31 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 394 249 km (244 975 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 464 km (223 982 mi).
11 days after descending node on 22 January 2020 at 20:31 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 6 February 2020 at 08:59 in ♋ Cancer.
11 days since the last southern standstill on 23 January 2020 at 03:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.225° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.268° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 February 2020 at 16:10 in ♋ Cancer.
24 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 5 days on 9 February 2020 at 07:33 in ♌ Leo 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