Moon phases 2020: 13 full moons and 12 new moons

2020 has 13 full moons, 12 new moons, 13 first quarters and 12 last quarters, 50 phases in all. The first full moon falls on Friday, 10 January 2020 at 19:21 UTC and the last on 30 December 2020 at 03:28 UTC.

When is the next full moon?

Every full moon of 2020 has already passed. The last of them was Wednesday, 30 December 2020 at 03:28 UTC, 2,093 days ago. The moon is only exactly full for a moment, when it sits opposite the Sun as seen from Earth. Either side of that instant it looks full to the eye for roughly a night, which is why almanacs and local calendars often disagree by a day.

How many full moons are there in 2020?

13. 2020 does have a blue moon in the calendar sense. October carries two full moons, on the 1st and the 31st, and the second of them is the blue moon. That is why the year totals 13 full moons rather than twelve. No calendar month in 2020 holds two new moons, so there is no black moon by that definition. The spacing between one full moon and the next is not fixed either: across 2020 the shortest gap is 29.34 days and the longest is 29.78 days, against a mean synodic month of 29.531 days. The moon's orbit is an ellipse and the Earth is moving around the Sun at the same time, so the interval breathes by several hours either way.

All 13 full moons of 2020

Traditional names are English folk names attached to the month, not to the moon itself, so they shift when a month carries two full moons.

When is the Harvest Moon in 2020?

The Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest the September equinox, not simply the September full moon, so in some years it lands in October. In 2020 the equinox falls at Tuesday, 22 September 2020 at 13:30 UTC and the nearest full moon is Thursday, 1 October 2020 at 21:05 UTC, 9.32 days after it. That is the one to call the Harvest Moon in 2020.

What are all the moon phase dates in 2020?

The table below lists every one of the 50 phases in order, with the exact UTC instant. New moon is the moment the moon passes between Earth and Sun; full moon is the opposite alignment; the quarters are the halfway points, when exactly half the lit face is turned towards us.

How are moon phase times calculated?

These instants come from the lunation series in chapter 49 of Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms. The method starts from a mean lunation counted from January 2000, then applies twenty-five periodic corrections built from the moon's mean anomaly, the Sun's mean anomaly and the moon's argument of latitude, followed by fourteen smaller planetary terms. The result is in Dynamical Time, so a delta T correction of roughly seventy seconds is subtracted to give the UT times shown here. Agreement with published tables across 2020 and the surrounding years is within half a minute.

Questions

How many full moons are in 2020?

13, the first on 10 January 2020 and the last on 30 December 2020.

Is there a blue moon in 2020?

Yes. October holds two full moons.

When is the Harvest Moon in 2020?

1 October 2020, the full moon nearest the September equinox.

Are these times local?

No. Every time on this page is UTC. Convert to your own clock before planning around it.

Moon phases in other years

More for 2020

Day of the year · Event countdowns · When is it? · Date calculator