Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

Moon at First Quarter

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed

Objects: The Moon
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The sky at

The Moon will pass first quarter phase, appearing prominent in the evening sky and setting in the middle of the night.

From Ashburn , it will be visible from soon after it rises, at 12:35, until soon before it sets at 23:30.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

At this time in its monthly cycle of phases, it appears almost exactly half illuminated.

The Moon orbits the Earth once every four weeks, causing its phases to cycle through new moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter, and back to new moon once every 29.5 days.

As it progresses through this cycle, it is visible at different times of day. At first quarter, it appears high in the sky at sunset before sinking towards the horizon and setting in the middle of the night. More information about the Moon's phases is available here.

The exact moment of first quarter

The exact moment of first quarter is defined as the time when the Moon's ecliptic longitude is exactly 90° away from the Sun's ecliptic longitude, as observed from the center of the Earth. However, the Moon does not appear in any way special at this instant in time, and a first quarter moon can be observed at any time in the evening sky.

At the moment it reaches first quarter, the Moon's distance from the Earth will be 381,000 km. Its celestial coordinates will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 21h17m10s 10°49'S Aquarius 31'20"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 12 Nov 2024

The sky on 12 November 2024
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
16:57
Twilight ends
18:29
Twilight begins
05:15

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

90%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:48 13:23 17:58
Venus 10:11 14:43 19:15
Moon 15:02 21:21 03:53
Mars 21:44 05:01 12:19
Jupiter 18:34 01:55 09:16
Saturn 14:03 19:37 01:11
All times shown in EST.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

11 Nov 2051  –  Moon at First Quarter
18 Nov 2051  –  Full Moon
24 Nov 2051  –  Moon at Last Quarter
03 Dec 2051  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EST

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