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 24 December 2026 at 01:28 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 ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 2026.
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 1.1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1973" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 333 of Meeus index or 1286 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes and it is 1 minute longer than the upcoming lunation's length. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2026. 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 6 hours and 48 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 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 ∠159.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠184.3°.
Moon is at perigee at 08:30 about 13 days since last apogee on 11 December 2026 at 06:46 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 7 January 2027 at 08:10 in ♑ Capricorn.
This perigee Moon is 356 650 km (221 612 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest perigee of 2026. It is 5 858 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 225 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
9 days after ascending node on 14 December 2026 at 13:04 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 27 December 2026 at 07:55 in ♌ Leo.
1 day since the last northern standstill on 23 December 2026 at 12:33 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.620° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠-27.636° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 January 2027 at 20:46 in ♐ Sagittarius.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius 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