First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 62% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 20 November 2023 at 10:50 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 ∠13° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2023 after 5 days on 27 November 2023 at 09:16.
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 1.5% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1943".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 295 of Meeus index or 1248 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 5 minutes and it is 1 hour and 40 minutes longer 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 1 hour and 21 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 42 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 ∠269.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠303.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 21:03 about 14 days since last apogee on 6 November 2023 at 21:49 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 4 December 2023 at 18:42 in ♍ Virgo.
This perigee Moon is 369 824 km (229 798 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2023. It is 7 316 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 532 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
10 days after descending node on 11 November 2023 at 08:49 in ♎ Libra 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 24 November 2023 at 11:02 in ♈ Aries.
4 days since the last southern standstill on 16 November 2023 at 14:45 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.238° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.191° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 November 2023 at 14:08 in ♊ Gemini.
24 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 27 November 2023 at 09:16 in ♊ Gemini 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