Full Moon on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 100%. The lunar cycle is 14 days old.
* The exact date and time of this Full Moon phase is on 31 December 2009 at 19:13 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 about ∠6° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 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 0.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1955" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 14 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 123 of Meeus index or 1076 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 9 minutes and it is 31 minutes shorter 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 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 6 hours and 25 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 38 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 ∠135.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠164.3°.
10 days since point of apogee on 20 December 2009 at 14:54 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 1 January 2010 at 20:36 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 366 614 km (227 803 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 684 km (222 876 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 18 December 2009 at 16:41 in ♑ Capricorn 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 1 January 2010 at 12:30 in ♋ Cancer.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 30 December 2009 at 10:09 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠25.787° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.796° at the point of next southern standstill on 12 January 2010 at 08:33 in ♐ Sagittarius.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn 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