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 31 January 2018 at 13:27 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 ∠11° of ♌ Leo 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 0.6% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1958" and ∠1947".
The Moon is 14 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 223 of Meeus index or 1176 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 48 minutes and it is 2 hours and 42 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. It is 59 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 ∠198.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠227.1°.
1 day since point of perigee on 30 January 2018 at 09:54 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 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 February 2018 at 14:16 in ♐ Sagittarius.
The Moon is 366 054 km (227 455 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 701 km (252 091 mi).
Moon is in ascending node in ♌ Leo at 18:46 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next descending node later on 14 February 2018 at 21:11 in ♒ Aquarius.
2 days since the last northern standstill on 29 January 2018 at 11:32 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.027° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠-20.026° at the point of next southern standstill on 11 February 2018 at 23:21 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 18:46 in the point ot ascending node the Moon is completing the last draconic month and is entering a new one while the lunar orbit is crossing the ecliptic from South to North.
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