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 16 February 2081 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 ∠7° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2081 after 6 days on 23 February 2081 at 14:27.
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 2.6% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1892" and ∠1941".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 1003 of Meeus index or 1956 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 1 minute and it is 2 hours and 2 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 6 hours and 16 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 47 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 ∠177.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠202.2°.
8 days since point of apogee on 9 February 2081 at 03:24 in ♒ Aquarius 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 23 February 2081 at 06:18 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 378 827 km (235 392 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 356 862 km (221 744 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 11 February 2081 at 16:49 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 24 February 2081 at 20:03 in ♍ Virgo.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 4 February 2081 at 13:10 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.557° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠28.630° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 February 2081 at 03:19 in ♊ Gemini.
5 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
In 6 days on 23 February 2081 at 14:27 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