First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 53% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 17 December 2026 at 05:43 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 leaving the last ∠1° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♈ Aries later.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2026 after 6 days on 24 December 2026 at 01:28.
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 5.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1850" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 333 of Meeus index or 1286 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 minute longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2026. 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 6 hours and 48 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 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 ∠159.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠184.3°.
6 days since point of apogee on 11 December 2026 at 06:46 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 24 December 2026 at 08:30 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 387 416 km (240 729 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 6 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 650 km (221 612 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 14 December 2026 at 13:04 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 27 December 2026 at 07:55 in ♌ Leo.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 9 December 2026 at 15:27 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.602° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.620° at the point of next northern standstill on 23 December 2026 at 12:33 in ♊ Gemini.
2 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 24 December 2026 at 01:28 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