Moon Phase Today

The Moon phase is the shape of the sunlit part of the Moon we can see from Earth right now, and today it is computed live at the top of this page from the exact positions of the Sun and Moon. The phase name — from New Moon through the crescents and quarters to Full Moon — comes directly from the angle between the Sun and the Moon as seen from Earth, called the elongation. When that angle is near zero the Moon sits between us and the Sun and appears dark; when it reaches 180° the Moon is opposite the Sun and its whole face is lit.

The illumination percentage is the fraction of the Moon's visible disc that is currently lit by sunlight. A New Moon reads near 0%, a First or Last Quarter reads close to 50%, and a Full Moon reads near 100%. Because the Moon moves roughly twelve degrees around its orbit each day, this figure changes noticeably from one day to the next — which is why the number you see here is recalculated rather than pulled from a static table.

Alongside the phase, the card shows the Moon's current zodiac sign and the degree it occupies within that sign, plus the Sun's sign for context. Everything is derived from the Swiss Ephemeris, the same high-precision astronomical engine used by professional astrology software, so the values reflect the real sky at this moment rather than an approximation.

The Moon does not make its own light; we only ever see the half of it lit by the Sun. As the Moon travels around Earth over about 29.5 days — one synodic month — the angle between the Sun, Earth and Moon steadily changes, and with it the slice of the lit half that faces us. That single geometric relationship produces the entire cycle of phases, in the same fixed order, month after month.

The cycle begins at the New Moon, when the Moon is roughly between Earth and the Sun and its lit side points away from us. Over the following days a thin Waxing Crescent appears and thickens to the First Quarter, when half the disc is lit. It grows through the Waxing Gibbous to the Full Moon, when Earth sits between the Sun and Moon and the entire near side glows. Then the visible light recedes in reverse — Waning Gibbous, Last Quarter, Waning Crescent — until the next New Moon resets the count.

'Waxing' simply means the lit portion is growing toward Full; 'waning' means it is shrinking back toward New. The four principal phases — New, First Quarter, Full, Last Quarter — are precise astronomical instants, while the crescent and gibbous phases name the stretches between them. The label shown above tells you exactly where in this cycle today falls.

Your Moon sign is the zodiac sign the Moon was passing through at the moment you were born — a different thing from the Moon phase, which describes the whole sky on a given day rather than any one person. Where your Sun sign is the headline most people know, astrology treats the Moon sign as the more private layer: your instinctive reactions, emotional needs and the inner tone underneath the personality you show the world.

The Moon is the fastest-moving body in a chart, changing signs roughly every two and a half days, so pinning down your Moon sign takes an accurate birth date and, ideally, birth time. The sign shown on the card above is where the Moon sits today for everyone; to find where it sat on your own birthday, you can run a free birth chart, which places your Moon, Sun and Rising from real ephemeris data.

Reading the two together can be illuminating: knowing today's Moon sign tells you the emotional 'weather' many people feel, while your natal Moon sign describes your personal baseline. When the transiting Moon meets your natal placements, astrology reads it as moments when the day's mood lands especially close to home.

The phase shifts daily because the Moon is always moving. It completes a full orbit relative to the Sun in about 29.5 days, which works out to roughly twelve degrees of elongation per day. Each day, then, the Sun–Moon angle has advanced enough to visibly change how much of the lit face we see, so the illumination percentage and often the named phase are different from yesterday's.

This steady motion is also why the Moon rises and sets almost an hour later each day, and why a phase seen at the same clock time drifts forward across the calendar. Over the course of a month the small daily steps add up to the complete New-to-Full-to-New journey, and then the cycle begins again without pause.

Because the position is genuinely time-dependent, this page recomputes the phase, illumination and Moon sign on a daily schedule from the Swiss Ephemeris. The date stamped on the card tells you exactly which moment the figures were calculated for, so you always know they reflect the current sky.