Moon phases 2023: 13 full moons and 12 new moons

2023 has 13 full moons, 12 new moons, 12 first quarters and 12 last quarters, 49 phases in all. The first full moon falls on Friday, 6 January 2023 at 23:07 UTC and the last on 27 December 2023 at 00:33 UTC.

When is the next full moon?

Every full moon of 2023 has already passed. The last of them was Wednesday, 27 December 2023 at 00:33 UTC, 1,001 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 2023?

13. 2023 does have a blue moon in the calendar sense. August 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 2023 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 2023 the shortest gap is 29.29 days and the longest is 29.81 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 2023

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 2023?

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 2023 the equinox falls at Saturday, 23 September 2023 at 06:50 UTC and the nearest full moon is Friday, 29 September 2023 at 09:57 UTC, 6.13 days after it. That is the one to call the Harvest Moon in 2023.

What are all the moon phase dates in 2023?

The table below lists every one of the 49 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 2023 and the surrounding years is within half a minute.

Questions

How many full moons are in 2023?

13, the first on 6 January 2023 and the last on 27 December 2023.

Is there a blue moon in 2023?

Yes. August holds two full moons.

When is the Harvest Moon in 2023?

29 September 2023, 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 2023

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