First Quarter on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 51% and growing larger. The lunar cycle is 7 days young.
* The exact date and time of this First Quarter phase is on 15 April 2073 at 10:36 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 ∠3° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♌ Leo later.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2073 after 6 days on 22 April 2073 at 01:54.
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 0.2% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1908" and ∠1912".
The Moon is 7 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 906 of Meeus index or 1859 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 1 minute and it is 2 hours and 25 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 3 hours and 17 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 46 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 ∠192.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠218.1°.
9 days since point of apogee on 6 April 2073 at 05:19 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 21 April 2073 at 03:38 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 375 754 km (233 483 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 345 km (222 665 mi).
12 days after descending node on 3 April 2073 at 11:42 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 17 April 2073 at 19:11 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 14 April 2073 at 00:42 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠19.238° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-19.330° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 April 2073 at 14:23 in ♑ Capricorn.
24 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 22 April 2073 at 01:54 in ♏ Scorpio 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