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 2 January 2018 at 02:24 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 ∠18° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Wolf of January 2018.
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 1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1971" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 222 of Meeus index or 1175 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 47 minutes and it is 59 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2018. 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 7 hours and 3 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length and it is the longest synodic month length of 21st century.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠173.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠198.1°.
1 day since point of perigee on 1 January 2018 at 21:54 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 15 January 2018 at 02:10 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 363 673 km (225 976 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 461 km (252 563 mi).
11 days after descending node on 22 December 2017 at 10:04 in ♒ Aquarius 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 4 January 2018 at 07:48 in ♌ Leo.
At 00:01 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠20.055°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-20.048° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 15 January 2018 at 16:28.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo 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