First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 56% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 8 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 11 December 2051 at 00:07 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 ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♈ Aries later.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2051 after 6 days on 17 December 2051 at 16:05.
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 0% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1948" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 642 of Meeus index or 1595 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 17 hours and 29 minutes and it is 2 hours and 4 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 4 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 18 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 ∠214.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠248.4°.
11 days since point of apogee on 29 November 2051 at 23:42 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 December 2051 at 19:57 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 367 919 km (228 614 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 745 km (224 778 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 29 November 2051 at 08:08 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 13 December 2051 at 08:09 in ♈ Aries.
7 days since the last southern standstill on 4 December 2051 at 11:27 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.781° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.789° at the point of next northern standstill on 17 December 2051 at 14:21 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 17 December 2051 at 16:05 in ♊ Gemini 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