First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 45% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 31 March 2031 at 00:32 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 ∠4° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2031 after 8 days on 7 April 2031 at 17:21.
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 8.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1921".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 386 of Meeus index or 1339 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 8 minutes and it is 1 hour and 12 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 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 39 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 ∠70.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠106.4°.
Moon is at apogee at 15:24 about 12 days since last perigee on 17 March 2031 at 18:58 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next perigee on 11 April 2031 at 19:13 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This apogee Moon is 404 227 km (251 175 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest apogee of 2031. It is 1 181 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 176 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
2 days after descending node on 27 March 2031 at 14:22 in ♉ Taurus 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 10 April 2031 at 14:56 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 29 March 2031 at 04:58 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.242° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-21.160° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 April 2031 at 00:31 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 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 8 days on 7 April 2031 at 17:21 in ♎ Libra 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