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 1 March 2031 at 04:02 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 ∠4° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2031 after 6 days on 9 March 2031 at 04:30.
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 9.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1936".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 385 of Meeus index or 1338 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 1 minute and it is 1 hour and 8 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 44 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 25 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 ∠41.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠70.3°.
Moon is at apogee at 18:57 about 11 days since last perigee on 19 February 2031 at 00:35 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next perigee on 17 March 2031 at 18:58 in ♑ Capricorn.
This apogee Moon is 404 533 km (251 365 mi) away from Earth. It is 875 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 2 176 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after descending node on 28 February 2031 at 11:02 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 14 March 2031 at 11:38 in ♐ Sagittarius.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 1 March 2031 at 20:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.491° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.353° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 March 2031 at 19:06 in ♐ Sagittarius.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 9 March 2031 at 04:30 in ♍ Virgo 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