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 4 April 2074 at 18:40 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 ∠24° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2074 after 6 days on 11 April 2074 at 18:30.
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 4.4% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1834" and ∠1917".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 918 of Meeus index or 1871 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 28 minutes and it is 31 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2074. 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 44 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 19 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 ∠144° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠170.1°.
5 days since point of apogee on 31 March 2074 at 02:22 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 12 April 2074 at 14:37 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 390 861 km (242 870 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 7 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 026 km (222 467 mi).
13 days after descending node on 23 March 2074 at 02:17 in ♒ Aquarius 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 6 April 2074 at 16:25 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 4 April 2074 at 08:53 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.533° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.642° at the point of next southern standstill on 17 April 2074 at 01:07 in ♑ Capricorn.
26 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 11 April 2074 at 18:30 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