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 6 May 2012 at 03:35 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 ∠21° of ♏ Scorpio tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Flower of May 2012.
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 3.7% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1901".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 152 of Meeus index or 1105 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 29 minutes and it is 1 hour and 14 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 3 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 18 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 ∠168.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠191.8°.
Moon is at perigee at 03:33 about 13 days since last apogee on 22 April 2012 at 13:49 in ♉ Taurus the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 19 May 2012 at 16:13 in ♉ Taurus.
This perigee Moon is 356 954 km (221 801 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest perigee of 2012. It is 5 554 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 529 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
12 days after descending node on 24 April 2012 at 03:44 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 7 May 2012 at 09:43 in ♐ Sagittarius.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 25 April 2012 at 05:37 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠21.738° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-21.719° at the point of next southern standstill on 8 May 2012 at 06:18 in ♐ Sagittarius.
26 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