Full Moon on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 99%. The lunar cycle is 14 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Full Moon phase is on 11 January 2009 at 03:27 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 about ∠11° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Wolf of January 2009.
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 1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 14 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 111 of Meeus index or 1064 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 hour and 53 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2009. 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 6 hours and 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 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 ∠186.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠213.2°.
Moon is at perigee at 10:52 about 14 days since last apogee on 26 December 2008 at 17:50 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 23 January 2009 at 00:11 in ♑ Capricorn.
This perigee Moon is 357 501 km (222 141 mi) away from Earth. It is 5 007 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 855 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
11 days after ascending node on 30 December 2008 at 07:40 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 12 January 2009 at 08:34 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 9 January 2009 at 05:38 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.060° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.081° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 January 2009 at 14:02 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first 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