Free astronomy tool
Moon Phase Calendar
Tonight's moon phase, the date of the next full moon, and a month-by-month calendar of every phase.
Tonight
Waxing crescent
13% lit · day 4 of 30 of the lunar month
August 2026
Dates and times shown in UTC.
When the moon is up tonight
The phase is the same for everyone, but the time the moon clears your horizon is not. It depends on where you are, so this part of the page asks before it answers.
Moonrise—
Moonset—
If you share your location it stays on this device — rounded to about 7 miles, used only by this page's math in your browser, remembered only in this browser, and never sent to us or anyone else.
The full moons ahead
| Date | Name | Distance | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 28, 2026 | Sturgeon Moon | 390,401 km | Partial lunar eclipseAlso the Sturgeon Moon |
| Sep 26, 2026 | Harvest Moon | 379,436 km | Also the Harvest Moon |
| Oct 26, 2026 | Hunter's Moon | 368,874 km | Also the Hunter's Moon |
| Nov 24, 2026 | Beaver Moon | 360,769 km | SupermoonAlso the Beaver Moon |
| Dec 24, 2026 | Cold Moon | 356,741 km | SupermoonAlso the Cold Moon |
| Jan 22, 2027 | Wolf Moon | 357,643 km | SupermoonAlso the Wolf Moon |
| Feb 20, 2027 | Snow Moon | 363,303 km | Penumbral lunar eclipseAlso the Snow Moon |
| Mar 22, 2027 | Worm Moon | 372,521 km | Also the Worm Moon |
| Apr 20, 2027 | Pink Moon | 383,422 km | Also the Pink Moon |
| May 20, 2027 | Flower Moon | 393,898 km | Also the Flower Moon |
| Jun 19, 2027 | Strawberry Moon | 401,949 km | Also the Strawberry Moon |
| Jul 18, 2027 | Buck Moon | 405,972 km | Also the Buck Moon |
A penumbral eclipse is the moon clipping the soft outer edge of the earth's shadow. It dims one side very slightly and is easy to miss even when you know it is happening. A total or partial eclipse is worth setting an alarm for.
- When is the next full moon?
- The date and time are at the top of this page, worked out for your own time zone when you open it. The moon reaches full at a single instant worldwide, so everyone sees the same moment on a different clock, and the calendar date can differ by one depending on where you are. Full moons come about 29.5 days apart, though the real gap swings several hours either side of that.
- What moon phase is it tonight?
- Tonight’s phase and the percentage of the disc lit are shown at the top of this page, and the calendar below gives every other day of the month. The lit fraction is the same wherever you are. What changes with where you stand is the orientation: the lit edge that faces right from the northern hemisphere faces left from the southern, and this page turns the drawing around for southern viewers.
- How often does a full moon happen?
- One full moon every 29.5 days on average, which is the synodic month, the time it takes the moon to return to the same position relative to the sun. That average hides real variation: the interval swings several hours either side of it because the moon orbits on an ellipse and the sun tugs on that orbit. It is why a calendar built on the average alone lands on the wrong day about one month in three, and why the dates here are computed from the full periodic model instead.
- What is a blue moon?
- Today the term usually means the second full moon in a single calendar month, which happens about every two and a half years. That is not the original meaning. The Maine Farmers Almanac used it for the third full moon in a season that had four, and the calendar-month version entered circulation through a misreading of that rule in a 1946 issue of Sky and Telescope. This page flags the calendar-month kind, because that is what people now mean, and the moon does not turn blue in either case.
- What is a supermoon?
- A full moon that happens near the closest point of the moon's orbit, so it looks slightly larger and brighter than usual. There is no official definition. This page flags a full moon closer than 361,885 kilometers, the fixed threshold Fred Espenak used. The astrologer who coined the word in 1979 used a proportional rule instead, and lists built on the two disagree about several moons a year, which is why no two calendars quite match.
- Does the full moon affect sleep?
- The evidence is much weaker than the folklore. One 2013 study reported shorter and lighter sleep around the full moon in a small set of already-collected lab data, and it drew a great deal of attention. A larger 2014 attempt to reproduce the result in over a thousand nights did not find the effect. This page is an astronomy tool and takes no position beyond that; the moon is worth looking at either way.
Where these numbers come from
- Phase times — the dates and clock times of every new, full and quarter moon on this page — are computed from Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (2nd ed., Willmann-Bell, 1998), chapter 49. Checked against the published lunar calendar for a full year: all 49 phases of 2026 match, worst difference 36 seconds.
- Lunar distance is chapter 47 of the same book, and the eclipse predictions are chapter 54, checked against NASA's five millennium catalog of lunar eclipses.
- The traditional names are the list the Old Farmer's Almanac has published since the 1930s. It is a compilation rather than one tradition: some names are Colonial American, some English, and some are attributed to Algonquian-speaking peoples, usually without saying which nation. Many Indigenous nations keep their own lunar calendars, which differ from this list and from each other, so the common "Native American moon names" label for it is not one we use.
- The harvest moon is the full moon nearest the September equinox, which is why it sometimes falls in October. When it does, the hunter's moon follows it into November and September takes the corn moon instead. That happened in 2020 and happens again in 2028.
- Blue moon here means the second full moon in a calendar month. The older seasonal definition — the third full moon in a season of four — is the original; the calendar-month rule spread from a misreading of it in Sky & Telescope, March 1946.
- Supermoon has no official definition. This page uses Fred Espenak's fixed threshold of 361,885 km. Richard Nolle, who coined the term in 1979, used a proportional rule instead, which flags more moons, so lists disagree and none of them is wrong.
- Rise and set times use a geometric horizon and a geocentric moon, with no correction for refraction, the moon's apparent size, or your height above sea level. Those pull in opposite directions and largely cancel; expect a few minutes' difference from an almanac, on a location this page rounds to about seven miles anyway.
- On whether the moon affects sleep: Cajochen et al. 2013, Evidence that the lunar cycle influences human sleep, and the larger replication that did not find the effect — Cordi et al. 2014, Lunar cycle effects on sleep and the file drawer problem.
More sleep tools
- Sleep CalculatorPick a wake-up time or a bedtime and count through full sleep cycles to a realistic window at the other end.
- Caffeine Cutoff CalculatorEnter your bedtime and see when to switch to decaf, based on how long caffeine actually lingers in the body.
- Breathing PacerA visual guide for 4-7-8, box, and coherent breathing — follow the circle, slow your breath, wind down for bed.
- Tonight's SkyThe real sky tonight: the constellation the moon is in, its phase, and the constellations overhead right now.