Moon phases in May 2027
The Moon is new on 6 May, at first quarter on 13 May, full on 20 May (the Flower Moon) and at last quarter on 28 May.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 May: Waning crescent, 26% lit | 2 May: Waning crescent, 17% lit | |||||
| 3 May: Waning crescent, 10% lit | 4 May: Waning crescent, 5% lit | 5 May: Waning crescent, 1% lit | 6 May: New Moon at 10:59, 0% lit | 7 May: Waxing crescent, 2% lit | 8 May: Waxing crescent, 6% lit | 9 May: Waxing crescent, 12% lit |
| 10 May: Waxing crescent, 21% lit | 11 May: Waxing crescent, 31% lit | 12 May: Waxing crescent, 42% lit | 13 May: First quarter at 04:44, 54% lit | 14 May: Waxing gibbous, 65% lit | 15 May: Waxing gibbous, 75% lit | 16 May: Waxing gibbous, 84% lit |
| 17 May: Waxing gibbous, 91% lit | 18 May: Waxing gibbous, 96% lit | 19 May: Waxing gibbous, 99% lit | 20 May: Full Moon at 10:59, 100% lit | 21 May: Waning gibbous, 99% lit | 22 May: Waning gibbous, 96% lit | 23 May: Waning gibbous, 91% lit |
| 24 May: Waning gibbous, 85% lit | 25 May: Waning gibbous, 78% lit | 26 May: Waning gibbous, 69% lit | 27 May: Waning gibbous, 60% lit | 28 May: Last quarter at 13:58, 51% lit | 29 May: Waning crescent, 41% lit | 30 May: Waning crescent, 32% lit |
| 31 May: Waning crescent, 22% lit |
The main phases in May 2027
- New Moon Thu 6 May 2027 10:59 UTC Your time: 10:59 UTC
- First quarter Thu 13 May 2027 04:44 UTC Your time: 04:44 UTC
- Full Moon: Flower Moon Thu 20 May 2027 10:59 UTC Your time: 10:59 UTC Seasonal blue moon
- Last quarter Fri 28 May 2027 13:58 UTC Your time: 13:58 UTC
To the nearest minute. Our times agree with the US Naval Observatory's to within a minute and a half for every phase from 2026 to 2028. The Moon right now, live.
The Flower Moon
The full Moon of Thursday 20 May 2027 at 10:59 UTC is the Flower Moon in the Old Farmer's Almanac's list. It is 393,901 km from Earth, 29% of the way from apogee to perigee, so it is not a supermoon.
It is also a seasonal blue moon: the third of four full Moons between the March equinox and the June solstice, by NASA's older definition.
Every full Moon of 2027, with its name, is on full Moons in 2027.
Get the night of the Flower Moon as a print: the sky over your own town that night, on a star map.
Get the Moon from your date as a print: the Moon as it looked on a day that matters to you.
See the night sky on any date, free: the stars, the planets and the Moon over any town.
Questions
When is the full Moon in May 2027?
Thursday 20 May 2027 at 10:59 UTC. It is the Flower Moon.
When is the new Moon in May 2027?
Thursday 6 May 2027 at 10:59 UTC.
Is there a supermoon in May 2027?
The full Moon of 20 May 2027 is 393,901 km from Earth, 29% of the way from apogee to perigee, so it is not a supermoon.
Why are the times in UTC?
Each phase happens at one moment for the whole world, and UTC is the clock everyone can convert from. With JavaScript on, this page also shows every time and the whole calendar in your own time zone, so a phase near midnight lands on your own date.
Sources
- US Naval Observatory: Phases of the Moon. Our times are checked against USNO's for every phase from 2026 to 2028 and agree to within a minute and a half
- US Naval Observatory: Phases of the Moon and percent of the Moon illuminated (how the phases, the percent lit and the Moon's age are defined)
- Fred Espenak, AstroPixels: Full Moon at Perigee (full supermoons), 2001 to 2100, and the test for one
- NASA Science: Supermoons
- The Old Farmer's Almanac: Full Moon names
- The Old Farmer's Almanac: the Hunter's Moon, the full Moon after the Harvest Moon
- NASA Watch the Skies: the monthly and seasonal blue moon
- NASA Eclipse Web Site (Espenak): eclipse dates
- Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (2nd edition, 1998): chapter 47, the lunar theory behind the Moon's place, phase and distance; chapter 48, the lit fraction and the bright limb; chapter 25, the Sun's aberration
- IAU Office of Astronomy for Education: the lunar phases seen from the Southern Hemisphere
- NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, CGI Moon Kit (Ernie Wright, Noah Petro, 2019): the Moon's colour from the LROC Wide Angle Camera's Hapke-normalised mosaic, the face every Moon on these pages is drawn from
- LRO Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, LDEM_64 heights (NASA PDS Geosciences Node): the slopes that shade the ground near the terminator
- Archinal et al. (2011), Report of the IAU Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements: 2009, Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy 109, 101: the Moon's pole and turning, so the drawn face shows the libration of the moment
- NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, Moon Phase and Libration, 2026: what libration and the position angle of the axis are, and the frames we compared our drawing with
- NASA JPL Horizons: the Moon's sub-Earth point and pole angle, which our drawing matches to within 0.01 degrees on the dates we test
- Krisciunas and Schaefer (1991), A model of the brightness of moonlight, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 103, 1033: the Moon's brightness through its phases, which sets the earthshine against the sunlit side
- NASA Earth fact sheet: the Earth's radius and geometric albedo, for the earthshine
- The phases, distances and dates on this page are worked out by our own code from the sources above, the same lunar theory that places the Moon in the 3D viewer. The Moons are drawn by our own renderer from NASA's maps.