Moon Position — where the moon is tonight, from your location
This page answers two questions at once: what moon phase it is today, and where in your sky the moon actually is. Give it coordinates and it returns the live phase with its illuminated percentage, the moon's compass bearing and altitude, moonrise and moonset, lunar transit, moon age, the next full and new moon, and a calendar of every phase this month. Pick any date to plan a night ahead or look one up. All of it is computed in your browser from your latitude, longitude and the clock — no astronomy server involved.
Reading the moon's position
Azimuth and altitude
Two angles place the moon exactly. Azimuth is its compass bearing measured clockwise from north — 0° north, 90° east, 180° south, 270° west — so you can line the reading up against a real horizon and know which way to look. Altitude is its height above that horizon, from 0° at the skyline to 90° straight overhead. A negative altitude simply means the moon is below the horizon: it either has not risen yet or has already set, which is why the figure keeps updating even when there is nothing to see.
Why the moon rises later every day
The moon travels around Earth in the same direction the planet spins, shifting about 13° eastward against the background stars every day. Your location therefore has to rotate that extra bit before the moon clears your horizon again, so moonrise slips later by roughly 50 minutes a day on average. Over a month that drift walks the moon all the way around the clock, which is why a waxing crescent hangs in the early evening while a waning crescent only shows up before dawn — and why the moon is often visible in broad daylight.
The moon phases explained
Eight phases in a 29.5-day cycle
A phase is simply how much of the moon's lit half you can see from here. The moon does not produce light; the sun always illuminates exactly half of it, and the fraction of that half turned toward Earth changes as the moon works round its orbit. One full cycle — new moon back to new moon — takes 29.5 days, the synodic month. At new moon the moon sits roughly between us and the sun with its dark side facing us; at full it is on the opposite side with the lit face turned our way. The quarters fall midway, showing exactly half a disc.
Waxing, waning, crescent and gibbous
The names combine two ideas. Waxing means the lit portion is growing, waning that it is shrinking. Crescent means less than half is lit, gibbous more than half. So a waxing gibbous is filling out toward full, while a waning crescent is thinning toward new. A useful trick north of the equator: if the lit edge is on the right, the moon is waxing and rising in the afternoon or evening; on the left, it is waning and rising after midnight. South of the equator the rule reverses.
Moon age and what it tells you
Moon age is how many days have passed since the last new moon, so it runs 0 to 29.5 and pins you to a point in the cycle rather than a rough label. Age 7 is close to first quarter, 15 near full, 22 near last quarter. It is the number gardeners, anglers and anyone following a lunar calendar tend to work from, because it is continuous — you can say "three days past full" rather than picking between two phase names.
Supermoons, micromoons and distance
The moon's orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, so its distance swings between about 356,000 km at perigee and 406,000 km at apogee — a difference of roughly 14%. A full moon near perigee is what gets called a supermoon: about 7% wider and 15% brighter than average, which is real but genuinely hard to notice by eye without a side-by-side comparison. The famous effect of a huge moon on the horizon is the moon illusion, a quirk of perception, not distance. This page shows the live distance and flags supermoon or micromoon territory for whatever date you select.
Transit, anti-transit and solunar windows
Lunar transit is the moment the moon crosses your meridian and sits at its highest — moon noon, effectively, and the best time to observe or photograph it because you are looking through the least atmosphere. Anti-transit is twelve hours away, when it is at its lowest and usually below your feet.
Anglers use those two moments plus moonrise and moonset as the basis of solunar theory: the idea that fish and game feed most actively when the moon is overhead or underfoot. Major windows run about an hour either side of transit and anti-transit, minor windows half an hour either side of rise and set. It is a long-standing angling tradition rather than settled science, so the windows listed here are best treated as a way to choose between two mornings, not a promise.
What people use moon position for
Night and astrophotography
The moon is either your subject or your problem. To shoot it, you want transit time and its bearing so you can line it up behind a landmark. To shoot the Milky Way instead, you want the opposite: a new moon, or a night when moonset comes early enough to leave a dark window. Checking the phase calendar first saves a wasted drive.
Fishing and hunting
Beyond solunar windows, phase decides how much light a night carries. A full moon lets you work without a torch and changes how wary animals behave; a new moon makes for genuinely dark nights. Moonrise and moonset times matter as much as the phase, because a full moon that rises at 2 a.m. leaves the evening dark anyway.
Gardening, tides and getting home safely
Lunar-calendar gardening schedules sowing and pruning by phase and moon age. Tides follow the moon closely: spring tides at new and full when sun and moon pull in line, neap tides at the quarters — worth knowing before a coastal walk. And on a hillside or a trail, knowing when the moon sets tells you exactly when you will need a head torch.
How accurate is this moon position calculator?
Positions come from SunCalc, an implementation of the standard algorithms in Jean Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms. Phase, illumination and moon age are accurate to well within a percentage point, and azimuth and altitude to a fraction of a degree. Moonrise and moonset are the softest figures — the moon moves fast and atmospheric refraction near the horizon is variable — so expect a minute or two of difference against published tables, and more than that if hills or buildings block your actual skyline.
Your location never leaves your browser
Coordinates are used to compute the moon's position and nothing else. They are not logged, not stored and not transmitted — there is no server in the loop once the page has loaded. The only optional network request is a reverse geocode to show a place name, which you can skip by typing coordinates in manually. For direction and daylight on the same footing, see the online compass and sun position tools.