First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 47% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 19 December 2023 at 18:39 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 ∠24° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2023 after 7 days on 27 December 2023 at 00:33.
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% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 296 of Meeus index or 1249 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 25 minutes and it is 1 hour and 23 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 19 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 50 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 ∠303.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠328°.
2 days since point of perigee on 16 December 2023 at 18:53 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 1 January 2024 at 15:28 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 363 942 km (226 143 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 13 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 911 km (251 600 mi).
10 days after descending node on 8 December 2023 at 15:24 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 21 December 2023 at 13:54 in ♈ Aries.
5 days since the last southern standstill on 13 December 2023 at 21:51 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.151° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.131° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 December 2023 at 21:50 in ♊ Gemini.
25 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 7 days on 27 December 2023 at 00:33 in ♋ Cancer 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