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 10 December 2011 at 14:36 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 ∠17° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 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 7.9% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1801" and ∠1949".
The Moon is 14 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 147 of Meeus index or 1100 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 57 minutes and it is 1 hour and 36 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 47 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 22 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 ∠21.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠42.1°.
4 days since point of apogee on 6 December 2011 at 01:13 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 22 December 2011 at 02:56 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 397 991 km (247 300 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 801 km (226 677 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♊ Gemini at 07:04 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 12 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 23 December 2011 at 11:36 in ♐ Sagittarius.
At 13:37 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠22.554°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2011. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-22.554° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 23 December 2011 at 17:25.
14 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