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 17 December 2013 at 09:28 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 2013.
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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1777" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 172 of Meeus index or 1125 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 52 minutes and it is 28 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2013. 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 52 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 17 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 ∠336.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠353°.
13 days since point of perigee on 4 December 2013 at 10:15 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 19 December 2013 at 23:49 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 403 451 km (250 693 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 269 km (252 444 mi).
4 days after descending node on 13 December 2013 at 10:10 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 December 2013 at 00:21 in ♏ Scorpio.
At 01:00 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠19.570°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-19.537° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 31 December 2013 at 04:49.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio 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