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 January 2023 at 23:08 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 ∠23° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Wolf of January 2023.
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 9.8% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 284 of Meeus index or 1237 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 36 minutes and it is 23 minutes longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2023. 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 2 hours and 8 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 1 minute 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 ∠344.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠360°.
14 days since point of perigee on 24 December 2022 at 08:32 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 8 January 2023 at 09:19 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 405 319 km (251 854 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 459 km (252 562 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 1 January 2023 at 15:25 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 16 January 2023 at 06:32 in ♏ Scorpio.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 6 January 2023 at 03:08 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.406° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.461° at the point of next southern standstill on 20 January 2023 at 05:06 in ♑ Capricorn.
5 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus 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