First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 50% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 28 March 2042 at 12:00 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 ∠8° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2042 after 8 days on 5 April 2042 at 14:16.
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 3.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1860" and ∠1922".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 522 of Meeus index or 1475 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 56 minutes and it is 20 minutes longer 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 3 hours and 48 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 21 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 ∠359.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠15.5°.
6 days since point of perigee on 21 March 2042 at 17:40 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 4 April 2042 at 05:51 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 385 297 km (239 412 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 302 km (252 464 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 23 March 2042 at 10:11 in ♈ Aries 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 6 April 2042 at 12:20 in ♎ Libra.
At 05:49 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠28.188°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-28.222° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 12 April 2042 at 00:33.
5 days 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 8 days on 5 April 2042 at 14:16 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