First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 6 January 2025 at 23:56 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 ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2025 after 6 days on 13 January 2025 at 22:27.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 309 of Meeus index or 1262 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 9 minutes and it is 2 hours 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 25 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 38 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 ∠272.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠305.9°.
Moon is at perigee at 23:34 about 14 days since last apogee on 24 December 2024 at 07:25 in ♎ Libra 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 21 January 2025 at 04:55 in ♎ Libra.
This perigee Moon is 370 173 km (230 015 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2025. It is 7 665 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 183 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after ascending node on 5 January 2025 at 19:46 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 19 January 2025 at 01:48 in ♍ Virgo.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 30 December 2024 at 05:06 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.428° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.464° at the point of next northern standstill on 12 January 2025 at 04:30 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 13 January 2025 at 22:27 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