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 28 December 2012 at 10:21 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 ∠8° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 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 9.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1778" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 160 of Meeus index or 1113 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 2 minutes and it is 34 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 1 hour and 42 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 27 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 ∠6.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠23.3°.
2 days since point of apogee on 25 December 2012 at 21:19 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 January 2013 at 10:26 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 403 163 km (250 514 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 048 km (223 723 mi).
3 days after descending node on 24 December 2012 at 22:27 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 7 January 2013 at 23:50 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 26 December 2012 at 21:24 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.927° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.879° at the point of next southern standstill on 9 January 2013 at 15:22 in ♐ Sagittarius.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♏ Scorpio 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