First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 55% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 17 August 2048 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 ∠2° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2048 after 6 days on 23 August 2048 at 18:07.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 601 of Meeus index or 1554 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 26 minutes and it is 1 hour and 5 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 18 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 51 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 ∠240.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠276°.
12 days since point of apogee on 4 August 2048 at 17:05 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 3 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 20 August 2048 at 12:34 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 364 443 km (226 454 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 3 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 366 147 km (227 513 mi).
11 days after descending node on 5 August 2048 at 13:07 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 August 2048 at 04:55 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 4 August 2048 at 20:01 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.656° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-23.557° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 August 2048 at 16:40 in ♐ Sagittarius.
25 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 23 August 2048 at 18:07 in ♒ Aquarius 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