First Quarter Moon: Meaning and Energy
See the moon phase for any date: a drawn moon disc, illumination percentage, lunar age and the traditional meaning of the phase.
First Quarter
Half-lit and climbing: obstacles show up now, and the tradition says to push through them rather than around.
About this tool
At first quarter, about a week into the cycle, exactly half the disc is lit. Despite the name, the moon is a quarter of the way through its month — it rises around noon, stands high at sunset and sets near midnight.
The tradition of this phase is momentum against friction: obstacles tend to show up right now, and the classic advice is to push through them rather than around. Decisions made at the half-lit climbing moon are said to carry the rest of the month.
Use the calculator behind this page to see where any date lands in the cycle: it returns the exact phase, the illumination percentage and the lunar age in days, computed locally in your browser with nothing stored.
Example. The date 21 January 2000 returns a full moon, illumination 100 percent, and a lunar age of 14.7 days.
Limit. Age is a single synodic month of 29.530588853 days counted from the 6 January 2000 18:14 UTC new moon, not a full astronomical ephemeris.