First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 57% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 6 March 2044 at 21:17 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 2044 after 6 days on 13 March 2044 at 19:41.
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 2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1933".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 546 of Meeus index or 1499 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 14 minutes and it is 2 hours and 58 minutes 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 30 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 33 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 ∠272.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠304.8°.
Moon is at perigee at 20:36 about 14 days since last apogee on 22 February 2044 at 05:18 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 March 2044 at 01:56 in ♐ Sagittarius.
This perigee Moon is 369 930 km (229 864 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest perigee of 2044. It is 7 422 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 426 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
6 days after ascending node on 29 February 2044 at 14:57 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 13 March 2044 at 13:10 in ♍ Virgo.
At 16:53 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠28.650°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2044. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-28.641° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 21 March 2044 at 10:24.
6 days 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 March 2044 at 19:41 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