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 18 September 2024 at 02:34 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 first ∠2° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Harvest of September 2024.
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 3.2% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1972" and ∠1910".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 305 of Meeus index or 1258 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 54 minutes and it is 1 hour and 4 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 4 hours and 10 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 53 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 ∠155.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠179.7°.
Moon is at perigee at 13:26 about 12 days since last apogee on 5 September 2024 at 14:55 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 2 October 2024 at 19:40 in ♎ Libra.
This perigee Moon is 357 284 km (222 006 mi) away from Earth. It is 5 224 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 13 072 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
Moon is in ascending node in ♓ Pisces at 19:51 crossing the ecliptic from South to North. Lunar position remains north of if for the upcoming 13 days until Moon's next descending node later on 2 October 2024 at 11:52 in ♎ Libra.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 12 September 2024 at 04:51 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-28.671° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠28.695° at the point of next northern standstill on 24 September 2024 at 17:04 in ♊ Gemini.
At 19:51 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