First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 48% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 28 January 2023 at 15:19 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 ∠7° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2023 after 8 days on 5 February 2023 at 18:29.
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 4.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1863" and ∠1948".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 285 of Meeus index or 1238 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 13 minutes and it is 4 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2023. 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 31 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 38 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 ∠360° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠15.6°.
6 days since point of perigee on 21 January 2023 at 20:58 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 4 February 2023 at 08:55 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 384 714 km (239 050 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 476 km (252 572 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♉ Taurus at 16:05 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 12 February 2023 at 07:31 in ♏ Scorpio.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 20 January 2023 at 05:06 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.461° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.511° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 February 2023 at 08:18 in ♋ Cancer.
At 16:05 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
In 8 days on 5 February 2023 at 18:29 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