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 October 2002 at 07:20 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 ∠0° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Hunter of October 2002.
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 8.5% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1770" and ∠1928".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 34 of Meeus index or 987 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 17 minutes and it is 1 hour and 43 minutes 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 3 hours and 27 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 42 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 ∠358.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠14°.
1 day since point of apogee on 20 October 2002 at 04:41 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 4 November 2002 at 00:50 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 404 932 km (251 613 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 13 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 154 km (222 547 mi).
11 days after descending node on 10 October 2002 at 07:07 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 October 2002 at 18:18 in ♊ Gemini.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 12 October 2002 at 11:51 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.624° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.735° at the point of next northern standstill on 27 October 2002 at 06:34 in ♋ Cancer.
23 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini 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