First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 58% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 22 September 2023 at 19:32 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 ∠9° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2023 after 5 days on 29 September 2023 at 09:57.
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 1.3% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1938" and ∠1912".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 293 of Meeus index or 1246 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 15 minutes and it is 43 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2023. 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 31 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 32 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 ∠202.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠232.5°.
10 days since point of apogee on 12 September 2023 at 15:42 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 28 September 2023 at 01:05 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 369 892 km (229 840 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 911 km (223 638 mi).
5 days after descending node on 17 September 2023 at 19:18 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 30 September 2023 at 16:49 in ♈ Aries.
At 03:42 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-28.254°. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠28.294° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 5 October 2023 at 20:31.
20 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 5 days on 29 September 2023 at 09:57 in ♈ Aries 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