Moon Today

What the Moon's sign actually changes

The Moon crosses one sign every two and a half days, and it is the fastest-moving body in the chart by a wide margin. That speed is what makes it the useful one for daily timing: everything else described on this site moves on a scale of weeks to decades, so the Moon is the only thing that reliably distinguishes Tuesday from Thursday.

Traditionally the Moon's sign describes the emotional texture of a day rather than its events. A Moon in Aries day feels quick and slightly combative; a Moon in Taurus day is slower and harder to hurry. This is not a claim about causation — it is the oldest and most widely used timing convention in astrology, and it is at least internally consistent, which is more than most.

Phase versus sign

Two different things are shown above and they answer different questions:

• Sign — what the day feels like. Changes every two to three days.
• Phase — where you are in the monthly cycle. Changes gradually over 29.5 days.

Phase is the better guide for planning across weeks: the waxing half favours starting and building, the waning half favours finishing and clearing. Sign is the better guide for the next 48 hours.

Reading illumination

The percentage shown is the fraction of the Moon's visible disc that is lit, computed for the date rather than approximated from the phase name. It is worth knowing that illumination and phase angle are not linear with each other — the Moon is 50% lit at both quarters, but the days either side of the full Moon stay above 90% for nearly a week, which is why "the full Moon week" is a more useful unit than the full Moon itself.

Lunar day

The lunar day counts from the last New Moon, so it runs 1 to about 30 and resets each lunation. It is used heavily in Eastern European and Indian folk timing traditions, less so in modern Western astrology. It is included because a lot of readers look for it; if it means nothing to you, the sign and phase carry all the practical information.

Accuracy

Positions are computed from the ephemeris for noon UTC on the date shown, not interpolated from a lookup table. The Moon moves roughly half a degree an hour, so its sign is right except within an hour or two of an ingress — the lunar calendar page lists the exact crossing times.