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 20 May 2008 at 02:11 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 ∠4° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Flower of May 2008.
There is extremely high Full Moon ocean tide on this date. Combined Sun and Moon gravitational tidal force working on Earth is heavy, because of the Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy alignment and the near perigee.
Lunar disc appears visually 7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1896".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 103 of Meeus index or 1056 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 4 minutes and it is 8 minutes longer 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 5 hours and 40 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 29 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 ∠349.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠4.4°.
Moon is at apogee at 14:27 about 14 days since last perigee on 6 May 2008 at 03:22 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 3 June 2008 at 13:08 in ♊ Gemini.
This apogee Moon is 406 404 km (252 528 mi) away from Earth. It is 996 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 305 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
8 days after descending node on 12 May 2008 at 06:37 in ♌ Leo the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 26 May 2008 at 21:45 in ♒ Aquarius.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 8 May 2008 at 01:51 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.625° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.542° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 May 2008 at 04:00 in ♐ Sagittarius.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius 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