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 May 2011 at 11:09 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 ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♐ Sagittarius later.
The Full Moon these days is the Flower of May 2011.
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 2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1936" and ∠1897".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 140 of Meeus index or 1093 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 12 minutes and it is 2 hours and 21 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 28 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 35 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 ∠216.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠248.4°.
2 days since point of perigee on 15 May 2011 at 11:18 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 May 2011 at 09:58 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 370 177 km (230 017 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 006 km (251 659 mi).
10 days after descending node on 6 May 2011 at 14:54 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 19 May 2011 at 09:03 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 6 May 2011 at 03:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.421° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-23.403° at the point of next southern standstill on 18 May 2011 at 23:26 in ♐ Sagittarius.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius 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