Full moon and new moon: upcoming dates and zodiac sign
The Moon does not shine on its own: it reflects the Sun’s light, and the part of it we see changes every evening.
- Moon phases
- full moon
- lunar cycle
By Thomas Guilhot · updated
Right now: first quarter, 50%
The Moon at a glance
A cycle of twenty-nine and a half days that astrology associates with the rhythm of emotions and fresh starts.
A marker visible to everyone, which has set the rhythm of the month and of traditions for centuries.
Lunar beliefs are reported here: none of them announces what is going to happen to you.
- Next full moon
- October 26, 05:12, in Taurus
- Next new moon
- November 9, 08:02, in Scorpio
- Today
- First quarter
- One cycle
- About a month, from new moon to new moon
Eight phases, one cycle
The lit part of the Moon depends on the angle between the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon: 0° at the new moon, 180° at the full moon.
- New moon
The Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, which lights only its far side: it stays invisible, rising and setting together with the Sun. The Chinese calendar opens each month on this day; the Islamic calendar waits for the sighting of the first crescent.
- Waxing crescent
A thin arc of light appears in the west after sunset, lit on the right in the Northern Hemisphere. The dark part often shows a pale gray glow: earthshine, light reflected by the Earth, which Leonardo da Vinci was the first to explain.
- First quarterCurrent phase
The Moon makes a right angle with the Sun: the right half of the disk is lit. It rises around noon, reaches its highest point at dusk, and sets around midnight. The craters stand out well along the terminator, the boundary between shadow and light.
- Waxing gibbous
More than half of the disk is lit, and the bright part grows each evening. The Moon rises in the afternoon and stays visible for a good part of the night. “Gibbous” comes from the Latin gibbus, meaning hump, for its bulging shape.
- Full moon
The Earth lies between the Sun and the Moon: the entire face turned toward us is lit. It rises in the east as the Sun sets and disappears at dawn. If the alignment is almost perfect, the Earth’s shadow touches it: that is a lunar eclipse.
- Waning gibbous
The lit part shrinks, now on the left side as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. The Moon rises in the evening, a little later each day, and still shines high in the early morning; it can sometimes be seen in broad daylight, pale, in the blue morning sky.
- Last quarter
Another right angle with the Sun, on the other side: this time the left half is lit. The Moon rises around midnight and reaches its highest point at daybreak. It is the Moon of early-morning commutes, visible in the south as the sky grows light.
- Waning crescent
A fine crescent, open toward the left, rises shortly before the Sun, low on the eastern horizon. It grows thinner each morning until it is lost in the light of dawn, one or two days before the next new moon. Earthshine becomes visible again.
Lunations 2026 and 2027
Paris time and the sign the Moon is in, calculated to the minute; each full and new moon has its own page.
The sky, day after day
What tradition says
In astrology, the Moon would represent sensitivity, memory, the home, and the way we feel safe; it is the ruler of Cancer and would be exalted in Taurus. Its phase would count as much as its sign: tradition associates the waxing moon with what begins and grows, the full moon with what ripens or comes to light, and the waning moon with what ends, gets sorted out, or is passed on. In a birth chart, the phase under which a person was born would even serve as a key to the reading, following Rudhyar’s approach, which distinguished waxing-moon and waning-moon temperaments.
Outside astrology, the Moon feeds stubborn beliefs. Many people say they sleep badly around the full moon; the published studies on this point reach contradictory results, and this page draws no conclusion from them. In the garden, a country custom holds that you should sow in a waxing moon what grows above ground and in a waning moon what grows below, while other calendars follow the ascending and descending Moon. Finally, each full moon of the year carries a name in the almanacs: Wolf Moon in January, Strawberry Moon in June, Hunter’s Moon in October.
Not a prediction: phases and dates are calculated by the site’s engine; the traditions, reported in the conditional, are not to be followed blindly. Why?
Recharging a crystal → Same theme: the full moon of rituals
The lunar cycle
The cycle of phases, or synodic month, lasts on average 29 days 12 hours and 44 minutes; each lunation departs from this by a few hours, because the Moon’s orbit is an ellipse. It is longer than one trip around the zodiac, the sidereal month of 27.32 days, because the Earth has moved on around the Sun in the meantime. The Moon covers nearly 13° a day and moves from one sign to the next in about two and a half days. Because its orbit is tilted by a little more than 5° to the ecliptic, an eclipse occurs only if the lunation falls near a node. The eight phases used by astrologers were popularized by Dane Rudhyar (The Lunation Cycle, 1967).
Frequently asked questions about the Moon
Why do we always see the same side of the Moon?
Because the Moon rotates on its axis in exactly the time it takes to orbit the Earth, about 27.3 days. This synchronous rotation comes from the tides the Earth has exerted on it for billions of years, which gradually slowed its rotation. Slight wobbles, called librations, let us glimpse about 59% of its surface from Earth. The far side is not plunged into darkness for all that: it is fully lit at the new moon, when the side facing us is in the night.
What is the difference between a waxing Moon and an ascending Moon?
They are two distinct cycles, often confused. The waxing Moon refers to the phase: from new moon to full moon, its lit part increases. The ascending Moon describes its height in the sky: for about 13.7 days, it reaches a little higher each day, then a little lower for the next 13.7 days, following its declination. A Moon can therefore be waxing and descending at the same time. Traditional gardening calendars rely mostly on the ascending or descending Moon; the site’s lunar calendar gives both.
What is a blue moon?
In the most common usage, it is the second full moon in a single calendar month, which happens about every two and a half years: a 29.5-day cycle can fit twice into a month of 30 or 31 days. This meaning comes from a misreading published in 1946 in Sky & Telescope magazine; the Maine almanac called “blue” the third full moon of a season that has four. Its color does not change: a truly bluish Moon has been seen only after great eruptions, such as Krakatoa in 1883.
What is a supermoon?
The word was coined in 1979 by the American astrologer Richard Nolle for a full or new moon close to perigee, the point of its orbit nearest the Earth. The distance varies from about 356,500 to 406,700 km (about 221,500 to 252,700 miles): a full moon at perigee looks up to 14% wider and nearly 30% brighter than a full moon at apogee. Without a point of comparison, the eye struggles to see the difference. Astronomers prefer to speak of a perigee full moon.
Where do the names of the full moons come from?
The names repeated each month in the press, Wolf Moon, Pink Moon, or Sturgeon Moon, were spread in the 20th century by North American farming almanacs, first the Maine Farmers’ Almanac in the 1930s. They presented them as names used by Indigenous peoples, mostly Algonquian, mixed with customs from Europe; in reality, the names varied from one nation to another. In France, tradition mostly remembers the “lune rousse,” the lunation that begins after Easter, dreaded for its late frosts. Each full moon page recalls the names of its season.