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 16 December 2081 at 04:31 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 ∠1° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♋ Cancer later.
The Full Moon these days is the Cold of December 2081.
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 4.1% narrower than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1872" and ∠1950".
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 1013 of Meeus index or 1966 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 52 minutes and it is 2 hours and 26 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 1 hour and 8 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 55 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 ∠52.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠84.8°.
7 days since point of apogee on 9 December 2081 at 00:48 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 22 December 2081 at 10:49 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 382 994 km (237 981 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 5 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 370 264 km (230 071 mi).
8 days after ascending node on 7 December 2081 at 17:00 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 December 2081 at 12:04 in ♍ Virgo.
At 08:03 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠28.126°. This is the year's northernmost lunar standstill of 2081. Over the upcoming 12 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-28.138° at the point of next southern standstill in ♐ Sagittarius on 29 December 2081 at 05:56.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♓ Pisces 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