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 18 December 2040 at 12:16 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 2040.
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 8.3% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1795" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 14 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 506 of Meeus index or 1459 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 35 minutes and it is 1 hour longer than the upcoming lunation's length. 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 1 hour and 9 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours 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 ∠323.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠342.7°.
11 days since point of perigee on 6 December 2040 at 13:20 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 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 December 2040 at 13:29 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 399 364 km (248 153 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 778 km (252 139 mi).
2 days after ascending node on 15 December 2040 at 21:13 in ♉ Taurus the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 30 December 2040 at 10:13 in ♏ Scorpio.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 6 December 2040 at 01:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-26.791° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠26.761° at the point of next northern standstill on 19 December 2040 at 10:11 in ♋ Cancer.
2 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