First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 54% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 18 January 2024 at 03:53 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 ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2024 after 7 days on 25 January 2024 at 17:54.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 0.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1936" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 297 of Meeus index or 1250 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 2 minutes and it is 1 hour and 1 minute 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 42 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 27 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 ∠328° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠345.9°.
5 days since point of perigee on 13 January 2024 at 10:35 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 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 29 January 2024 at 08:14 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 370 199 km (230 031 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 781 km (252 141 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 17 January 2024 at 14:05 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 31 January 2024 at 20:17 in ♎ Libra.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 10 January 2024 at 07:04 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.164° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.203° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 January 2024 at 03:44 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day 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 25 January 2024 at 17:54 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