First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 49% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 27 May 2023 at 15:22 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 ∠4° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2023 after 7 days on 4 June 2023 at 03:42.
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 6.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1773" and ∠1894".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 289 of Meeus index or 1242 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes and it is 1 hour and 11 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 equal to the mean synodic month length. It is %hours_to_shortest% and %minutes_to_shortest% longer than the 21st century's shortest and %hours_to_longest% and %minutes_to_longest% shorter than the 21st century's longest synodic months.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠92.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠127.4°.
1 day since point of apogee on 26 May 2023 at 01:39 in ♌ Leo 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 6 June 2023 at 23:07 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 404 295 km (251 217 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 860 km (226 713 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 17 May 2023 at 19:36 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 1 June 2023 at 06:23 in ♏ Scorpio.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 22 May 2023 at 14:08 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.903° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 9 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.866° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 June 2023 at 16:21 in ♐ Sagittarius.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 7 days on 4 June 2023 at 03:42 in ♐ Sagittarius 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