Moon Phase Today

Today's moon phase is a Waning Gibbous, with 69% illumination and a lunar age of 20.3 days. The next full moon is in 25 days, on Oct 26. Phase, illumination, and age are the same everywhere on Earth at any given moment, so this answer holds wherever you are.

Tonight's moon is a Waning Gibbous at 69% illumination. The phase does not change between day and night: the Moon takes about 7.4 days to move from one primary phase to the next, so tonight's moon looks almost identical to this afternoon's. What changes from place to place is when it rises and sets, which decides whether it is above your horizon after dark.

Right now the Moon is a Waning Gibbous, with 69% of its visible disk lit by the Sun. The Moon never pauses on a phase. Its illumination shifts continuously, by roughly 10 to 13 percentage points a day around the quarter phases. Only the four primary phases (New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, and Last Quarter) are exact instants; the other four names describe the stretches of days in between.

Usually yes, unless the Moon is within a day or two of New Moon, when it sits too close to the Sun to see. Tonight it is a Waning Gibbous at 69% illumination.

As a rule, a waxing crescent shows low in the west just after sunset. A First Quarter moon is high at sunset and sets around midnight. A waxing gibbous is up for most of the evening, and a Full Moon is up all night. A waning gibbous rises in the mid-to-late evening, a Last Quarter moon rises around midnight, and a waning crescent only appears in the east before dawn. Clouds are the other half of the answer.

Moonrise depends on your location, so use the live calculator at the top of this page for your exact time. On average the Moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. A New Moon rises with the Sun, a First Quarter moon rises around noon, a Full Moon rises around sunset, and a Last Quarter moon rises around midnight. That is why a Full Moon is up all night while a Last Quarter moon is a late-night and morning sight.

The current phase is a Waning Gibbous. Any phase name that starts with Waxing, plus First Quarter, means the lit portion is growing toward Full Moon. Any name that starts with Waning, plus Last Quarter, means it is shrinking toward New Moon. To tell by eye from the Northern Hemisphere: if the right side is lit, the Moon is waxing; if the left side is lit, it is waning. In the Southern Hemisphere the sides are reversed.

The next full moon is on Oct 26, 25 days from today. Full moons arrive every 29.5 days on average, so most years have 12 and some have 13. The exact moment of Full Moon is the same instant worldwide, but the calendar date can fall a day apart depending on your time zone.

The Moon rises in the east and sets in the west, for the same reason the Sun does: Earth spins from west to east. The exact rising point moves north and south of due east over the month, and the size of that swing changes over an 18.6-year cycle. In the Northern Hemisphere, a winter Full Moon rises well north of east and rides high across the sky, while a summer Full Moon rises south of east and stays low, the reverse of the Sun in each season.

There are 8 moon phases in a standard 29.5-day lunar cycle: New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, Last Quarter, and Waning Crescent. The four primary phases (New, First Quarter, Full, and Last Quarter) each mark a precise moment in time when the Moon reaches an exact angle relative to the Sun. The four secondary phases are the transitional periods between them.

For viewing the Moon through a telescope, the First and Last Quarter phases are best. The Sun sits low over the terrain along the terminator line, the boundary between lunar day and night, and casts long shadows that give crater rims, mountain ridges, and lava plains real depth. The Full Moon is the worst phase for this: with no shadows, even major craters look flat, though the bright ray systems around young craters like Tycho and Copernicus show best near full.

For deep-sky stargazing (nebulae, galaxies, and faint star clusters), the New Moon is ideal, because there is no moonlight to wash out the sky.

A supermoon is a Full Moon (or, less commonly, a New Moon) that occurs near perigee, the Moon's closest point to Earth in its slightly elliptical orbit. At perigee the Moon is about 356,000 km away, roughly 14% closer than at apogee (406,000 km). That makes a supermoon appear up to 14% larger and up to 30% brighter than a Full Moon near apogee, depending on how brightness is measured. Supermoons happen roughly 3 to 4 times per year.

A blue moon is an extra Full Moon that falls outside the usual pattern of one per month or three per season. A monthly blue moon is the second Full Moon in one calendar month; a seasonal blue moon is the third Full Moon in an astronomical season that holds four. Neither looks blue, and on average one or the other comes around every 2 to 3 years. The date of the next one is listed in our Blue Moon Guide.

A blood moon is a Full Moon during a total lunar eclipse. The most recent was on March 3, 2026, and the next is on December 31, 2028. When Earth passes directly between the Sun and the Moon, Earth's shadow covers the Moon completely. Instead of going dark, the Moon turns deep red or orange, because sunlight bending through Earth's atmosphere still reaches it; in effect, every sunrise and sunset on Earth is projected onto the lunar surface at once.

Yes, directly. The Moon's gravitational pull creates a tidal bulge on the side of Earth facing it. Spring tides, the highest highs and lowest lows, occur at New Moon and Full Moon, when the Sun and Moon line up and their pulls combine. Neap tides, the mildest tides, occur at First and Last Quarter, when the Sun and Moon sit at right angles and partly cancel each other out. Coastal tide predictions depend heavily on the current moon phase and the Moon's distance from Earth.

There are two answers depending on what you measure. The sidereal month, one complete orbit relative to the fixed stars, takes 27.3 days. The synodic month, a full phase cycle from New Moon back to New Moon, takes 29.5 days. The difference exists because Earth moves along its own orbit around the Sun during that time, so the Moon has to travel about two extra days to return to the same Sun-Earth-Moon geometry and the same phase.

The Moon does not physically change shape; it is always a sphere with one half lit by the Sun. What changes is how much of that sunlit half faces Earth as the Moon orbits. At New Moon the lit side faces entirely away from us, and as the Moon moves around Earth, more of it comes into view until the Full Moon shows the whole lit face. The cycle then reverses. Earth's shadow plays no part in the phases; it only falls on the Moon during a lunar eclipse.

Our calculations use SunCalc open-source astronomical algorithms based on the methods of Jean Meeus, whose Astronomical Algorithms is the accepted reference standard in the field. Results have been verified against NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Horizons system. The calculator is typically accurate to within about a minute for moonrise and moonset, and continuously updated for illumination and lunar age for any date and any location worldwide.