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 20 January 2078 at 21:59 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 ∠9° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2078 after 6 days on 28 January 2078 at 01:33.
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 0.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1967" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 965 of Meeus index or 1918 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 45 minutes and it is 2 hours and 6 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 1 minute longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 7 hours and 2 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 ∠294.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠321.6°.
2 days since point of perigee on 18 January 2078 at 18:32 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 3 February 2078 at 05:07 in ♎ Libra.
The Moon is 364 419 km (226 439 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 608 km (251 412 mi).
11 days after descending node on 9 January 2078 at 15:53 in ♏ Scorpio 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 22 January 2078 at 17:10 in ♉ Taurus.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 12 January 2078 at 21:22 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.463° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠26.499° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 January 2078 at 19:02 in ♋ Cancer.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 28 January 2078 at 01:33 in ♌ Leo 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