First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 24 August 2023 at 09:57 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 ∠2° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2023 after 6 days on 31 August 2023 at 01:35.
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 0.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1883" and ∠1898".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 292 of Meeus index or 1245 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 2 minutes and it is 13 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 18 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 45 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 ∠179.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠202.9°.
8 days since point of apogee on 16 August 2023 at 11:55 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 August 2023 at 15:51 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 380 598 km (236 493 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 182 km (221 943 mi).
2 days after descending node on 21 August 2023 at 16:23 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 3 September 2023 at 07:44 in ♈ Aries.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 12 August 2023 at 07:39 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.981° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.095° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 August 2023 at 20:22 in ♐ Sagittarius.
17 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 31 August 2023 at 01:35 in ♓ Pisces 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