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 15 May 2081 at 23:21 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 first ∠3° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2081 after 6 days on 22 May 2081 at 20:26.
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 3.9% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1897".
The Moon is 8 days young and navigating through the first part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 1006 of Meeus index or 1959 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 53 minutes and it is 2 hours and 10 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 hour and 51 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 18 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠265.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠298.3°.
13 days since point of apogee on 2 May 2081 at 14:12 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 May 2081 at 14:15 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 363 302 km (225 745 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 266 km (229 451 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 4 May 2081 at 10:34 in ♓ Pisces 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 17 May 2081 at 20:00 in ♍ Virgo.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 11 May 2081 at 21:38 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠28.437° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.376° at the point of next southern standstill on 24 May 2081 at 19:52 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 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 22 May 2081 at 20:26 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