Drag the Moon round its orbit (or press the arrow keys on it). We are looking down on the North Pole, and the Moon goes round anticlockwise. Half of the Moon is always lit; what changes is how much of that half faces us. The little person on the Earth turns once a day, and sees the Moon whenever it is above their horizon.
The next eclipses after this date, and what each looks like from the place you chose. Pick one.
The Moon is always half lit by the Sun. As it goes round the Earth we see more or less of that lit half: all of it at full moon, none of it at new, the half-and-half at the quarters.
The Moon travels round its orbit in the same direction the Earth turns, so it takes about 24 hours 50 minutes to come round again. On average moonrise slips 49 minutes a day, and some days of the month there is no moonrise at all.
The orbit is an ellipse. At its nearest the Moon is 356,400 km away and 33.5′ wide in the sky; at its farthest 406,700 km and 29.4′. That is 14 percent in width, which is the difference between a total solar eclipse and a ring.
The Moon’s orbit is tilted 5.1° to the Earth’s, so at most new moons it passes above or below the Sun, and at most full moons above or below the Earth’s shadow. An eclipse needs the Moon near the crossing.
Spread over a lunar month the Moon’s rise slips by 24 hours in 29.5 days, which is 49 minutes a day on average. It is not steady: near the autumn equinox the Moon’s track meets the horizon at a shallow angle, so for several evenings around full moon it rises almost at the same time each day. That is the harvest moon.
Because the Moon rises later each day, roughly once a month a calendar day has no moonrise at all: the Moon rose late the evening before and sets the next morning. London on 6 September 2026 is one: the Moon sets at 16:38 UT and there is no moonrise that day. This tool says “none today” rather than print a time that does not exist. The month view marks those days with a cross.
It is close: its horizontal parallax is nearly a degree, so where it appears depends on where on Earth you stand, and the threshold at which it is said to rise is 0.7275 times the parallax minus 0.5667°, about +0.125°: the Moon “rises” while its centre is still slightly above the geometric horizon, the opposite of the Sun. Its orbit is tilted and moving, so the geometry never repeats exactly.
A phase is an angle: how far east of the Sun the Moon is along the sky, 0° at new, 90° at first quarter, 180° at full and 270° at last quarter. This tool finds the moment the angle reaches each of those from the real positions of the Moon and Sun, rather than counting 29.53-day months from a reference, which can be out by half a day. Checked against the US Naval Observatory’s list of all 50 phases of 2026, the worst is within 10 minutes.
The Moon’s distance runs between 356,400 and 406,700 km. A supermoon here means a full or new moon nearer than the Moon’s average closest approach, 363,300 km, and a micromoon one farther than its average farthest point, 405,500 km; astronomers draw the line in slightly different places, so treat the words as a convention. The perigees and apogees are checked against all 27 of 2026: the times are good to about 6 hours and the distances to about 500 km.
Eclipses are found by the smallest angle between the Moon and the Sun, or the Earth’s shadow, set against the sizes of the discs. Run over 2025 to 2029 it finds 23 of NASA’s 24 eclipses with the right type and the time within 5 minutes; it misses the faintest, a penumbral eclipse in July 2027 of magnitude 0.001. Magnitudes are good to 0.003 for a total or annular eclipse and to about 0.06 for a deep partial one. The Moon’s position is good to about 2 arcminutes, which is about 200 km on the ground, so it cannot say whether a place is inside the narrow path of a total eclipse: use an eclipse map for that.
The full moon names (Wolf, Snow, Worm and so on) are traditional, popularised by the Old Farmer’s Almanac, and follow the northern hemisphere’s year; other cultures name them differently. A blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month, by the date in the place you chose, so it can differ between time zones; the seasonal kind is the third of four in a season. The harvest moon is the full moon nearest the September equinox.
The Moon’s position is Schlyter’s method, good to about 2 arcminutes, which is a moonrise good to a few minutes and a phase to within 10 minutes; it is not an ephemeris and should not be used to time an occultation or the contacts of an eclipse to the second. Refraction is the standard 34 arcminutes at sea level, and hills and buildings move the real moment by minutes.
Because it is a ball lit by the Sun, and we see it from a changing angle as it goes round the Earth. Half of it is always lit; the phase is how much of that lit half faces us.
Waxing means the lit part is growing, from new moon towards full; waning means it is shrinking, from full towards new. A waxing moon is lit on its right side in the northern hemisphere, a waning moon on its left; in the southern hemisphere it is the other way round.
It orbits the Earth in the same direction the Earth turns, so each day it has moved on about 13° against the stars and the Earth has to turn a little further to catch it up. That takes about 50 minutes.
Because the daily slip is nearly an hour: about once a month the Moon rises just before midnight on one day and just after midnight on the next, so the calendar day between them has no moonrise.
A full or new moon that happens when the Moon is near the closest point of its orbit. The disc is about 14 percent wider than at its farthest and a little brighter, which is hard to see without the two side by side. The word is a convention, not an astronomical term.
Because the Moon’s orbit is tilted 5.1° to the Earth’s. At most new moons it passes above or below the Sun, and at most full moons it misses the Earth’s shadow. An eclipse needs the new or full moon to fall near the two places where the orbits cross.
Usually the second full moon in one calendar month, which happens about every two and a half years because the month is a little longer than the 29.5 days between full moons. It is not blue. The date depends on your time zone.
It looks bigger but is not: measured with a ruler held at arm’s length it is the same width high or low. The effect is in how the brain judges size against the landscape.
Moonrise and moonset are good to a few minutes for a flat, sea-level horizon: the Moon’s position is good to about 2 arcminutes. Phases are within 10 minutes of the US Naval Observatory. Hills, buildings and the weather change when you can see it.
The full moon nearest the September equinox. The angle between the Moon’s track and the horizon is then shallow, so moonrise is only 20 to 30 minutes later each evening for several evenings, which gives a run of bright evenings near sunset.
Yes, by about 3.8 centimetres a year, measured by bouncing lasers off reflectors the Apollo astronauts left. It makes no difference you could see in a lifetime.
This page has changed in 6 archived releases, but each of those was a site-wide pass, so none is attributable to this tool on its own and none is listed here. That is not a claim that the tool never changed — a release that reworked many pages at once may well have altered this one too. The changelog has them.