Current lunar phase with NASA imagery — updated with your local time.
The darkest nights this month (lowest moon illumination) — ideal for aurora chasing.
The moon is the single biggest source of natural light pollution for aurora watchers. A full moon floods the sky with reflected sunlight, washing out all but the strongest aurora displays. Even at Kp 5 and above, the faint greens and subtle purple rays that make the aurora magical can disappear into the moonlit sky.
The best aurora viewing happens during the new moon and crescent phases, when the sky is at its darkest. During these phases, your eyes are fully dark-adapted and even faint Kp 3 aurora can put on a visible show from high-latitude locations.
When the moon is bright, experienced aurora chasers use a simple trick: keep the moon behind you or wait until it sets. Check the moonrise and moonset times above to plan the darkest window of the night. Combining this with Solar Ruler's live aurora forecast gives you the best possible chance of catching the lights.
For astronomers, aurora chasers, and astrophotographers alike, the Moon is the single most important factor in planning an observing session — more influential than weather, season, or even light pollution from cities. The concept of astronomical darkness refers to the period when the Sun is more than 18 degrees below the horizon and no significant natural light illuminates the sky. But even during astronomical darkness, a bright Moon can raise the sky's background brightness by several magnitudes, washing out faint stars, nebulae, and aurora detail.
The Bortle scale, which measures sky darkness from 1 (pristine) to 9 (inner-city), assumes a moonless sky. A full moon can effectively push your local Bortle class up by 2–3 levels, meaning that a reasonably dark suburban sky (Bortle 5) performs more like a bright urban one during the full moon. This is why serious aurora photographers and deep-sky observers plan their sessions around the lunar calendar above.
The golden hours for night sky observation each month fall during the new moon phase and the surrounding crescent days, when the Moon is below the horizon during prime viewing time (9 PM to 2 AM local time). During first quarter, the Moon sets around midnight, leaving the second half of the night dark. During third quarter, the Moon rises around midnight, so the first half of the night is your window. Use the moonrise and moonset times displayed above to plan these windows precisely for your location.
Professional observatories schedule their most sensitive observations — faint galaxies, dim nebulae, exoplanet transits — around the new moon. Amateur astronomers and aurora chasers benefit from the same discipline. A little planning around the lunar calendar can be the difference between a frustrating night squinting through moonlit haze and a breathtaking display of cosmic light.
The Moon is both enemy and ally for night sky photographers. During the full moon, long-exposure aurora and Milky Way shots are essentially impossible — the sky glows bright blue-gray, overpowering faint celestial detail. Most aurora photographers avoid shooting within three days of the full moon unless an exceptionally strong geomagnetic storm (Kp 7+) justifies the effort.
But a thin crescent moon can actually enhance your composition. A low crescent provides just enough light to gently illuminate foreground elements — mountains, lakes, trees — without washing out the sky. This creates a balanced, dramatic image that would otherwise require complex multi-exposure blending. For camera settings during crescent phases, try ISO 1600–3200, f/2.8, and 10–15 second exposures as a starting point.
Watch for Earthshine during the crescent phases — the faint illumination of the Moon's dark side caused by sunlight reflecting off Earth. It creates a ghostly, beautiful view of the full lunar disc with the bright crescent on one edge, and it photographs wonderfully with a telephoto lens. For more detailed camera settings and techniques, visit our Aurora Photography Guide.
When planning a photography outing, always check this page first. The illumination percentage, moonrise/moonset times, and aurora viewing conditions rating above give you everything you need to decide whether tonight is a shoot night or a planning night.
The Moon's gravitational pull is the primary driver of Earth's tides. As the Moon orbits, it creates a bulge of water on the side of Earth facing it and a corresponding bulge on the opposite side. When the Sun, Moon, and Earth align during new and full moons, their combined gravity produces spring tides — the highest highs and lowest lows. During quarter phases, the Sun and Moon pull at right angles, creating milder neap tides.
A supermoon occurs when a full moon coincides with the Moon's closest approach to Earth (perigee), at about 356,500 km. The Moon appears roughly 14% larger and 30% brighter than a full moon at apogee (the farthest point, ~406,700 km). While the difference is subtle to the casual observer, supermoons produce slightly stronger tides and noticeably brighter skies — making them even more problematic for aurora viewing. A micromoon (full moon at apogee) is the opposite: slightly smaller, slightly dimmer, and somewhat more forgiving for dark-sky activities.
The Moon is slowly receding from Earth at about 3.8 centimeters per year, a consequence of tidal energy transfer. Billions of years ago, the Moon was much closer and appeared far larger in the sky. In the distant future, total solar eclipses will no longer be possible because the Moon will be too small to fully cover the Sun. We live in a cosmically fortunate window where the Moon and Sun appear almost exactly the same size in our sky.
Have you ever wondered why we always see the same side of the Moon? This is called tidal locking — the Moon's rotation period has synchronized with its orbital period so that one face permanently points toward Earth. This happened over billions of years as Earth's gravity gradually slowed the Moon's spin. Finally, a Blue Moon is not a color at all — it refers to the second full moon in a single calendar month, an event that happens roughly once every 2.7 years.
Across cultures and centuries, the Moon's cycle has served as humanity's most reliable clock. Long before mechanical timekeeping, the roughly 29.5-day lunar cycle defined months, marked planting and harvesting seasons, and governed religious observances. The very word “month” derives from “Moon.”
In North American traditions, each month's full moon carries a name rooted in the natural world: the Wolf Moon (January), the Strawberry Moon (June), the Harvest Moon (September or October, the full moon nearest the autumn equinox), and many more. These names reflect the seasonal rhythms that early peoples tracked by the lunar cycle — when wolves howled in the cold, when berries ripened, when crops were gathered by moonlight.
The Islamic calendar is a purely lunar calendar, with each month beginning at the first sighting of the new crescent moon. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, combining lunar months with periodic adjustments to stay aligned with the solar year. These calendrical systems have shaped the timing of holidays like Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, and Easter for millennia.
Sailors and travelers have long used the Moon for navigation. A crescent moon's horns roughly indicate east and west, and the full moon's position can confirm compass directions in the dead of night. In literature and art, the Moon represents everything from romance and mystery to madness (the word “lunatic” shares its root with “lunar”). Even today, moon gardening — planting and pruning according to lunar phases — remains a living tradition in many farming communities, with practitioners believing that the Moon's gravitational pull on soil moisture mirrors its influence on the tides.