Full Moon on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 100%. The lunar cycle is 15 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Full Moon phase is on 21 December 2010 at 08:13 UTC.
The moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. It is visible all night and it is high in the sky around midnight.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing first ∠1° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 2010.
There is high Full Moon ocean tide on this date. Combined Sun and Moon gravitational tidal force working on Earth is strong, because of the Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy alignment.
Lunar disc appears visually 3.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1891" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 135 of Meeus index or 1088 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 15 hours and 27 minutes and it is 2 hours and 1 minute shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours and 43 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 20 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 ∠67° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠103.5°.
8 days since point of apogee on 13 December 2010 at 08:34 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 25 December 2010 at 12:24 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 378 991 km (235 494 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 463 km (228 952 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 14:08 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 3 January 2011 at 12:48 in ♑ Capricorn.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 20 December 2010 at 12:37 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.238° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.242° at the point of next southern standstill on 2 January 2011 at 10:06 in ♐ Sagittarius.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
The Moon is in a Full Moon geocentric opposition with the Sun and thus forming 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
