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 21 May 2016 at 21:15 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 ∠9° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Flower of May 2016.
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 5.7% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1789" and ∠1895".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 202 of Meeus index or 1155 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 30 minutes and it is 31 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2016. 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 5 hours and 14 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 55 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 ∠10.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠27.6°.
3 days since point of apogee on 18 May 2016 at 22:06 in ♎ Libra 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 3 June 2016 at 10:55 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 400 602 km (248 923 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 11 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 361 142 km (224 403 mi).
6 days after ascending node on 15 May 2016 at 20:39 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 30 May 2016 at 04:45 in ♓ Pisces.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 9 May 2016 at 21:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠18.447° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-18.539° at the point of next southern standstill on 24 May 2016 at 11:16 in ♑ Capricorn.
6 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo 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