Our Solar System

Moon phases in May 2028

The Moon is at first quarter on 2 May, full on 8 May (the Flower Moon), at last quarter on 16 May, new on 24 May and at first quarter on 31 May.

Full Moon of 8 May 2028, the Flower Moon
The Flower Moon, full on 8 May 2028 at 19:49 UTC
May 2028. Each day shows the Moon at the middle of the day, as it looks from the Northern Hemisphere; a day with one of the four main phases gives its time. Times in UTC.
MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
1 May: Waxing crescent, 43% lit2 May: First quarter at 02:26, 55% lit3 May: Waxing gibbous, 66% lit4 May: Waxing gibbous, 76% lit5 May: Waxing gibbous, 86% lit6 May: Waxing gibbous, 93% lit7 May: Waxing gibbous, 97% lit
8 May: Full Moon at 19:49, 100% lit9 May: Waning gibbous, 99% lit10 May: Waning gibbous, 96% lit11 May: Waning gibbous, 92% lit12 May: Waning gibbous, 85% lit13 May: Waning gibbous, 77% lit14 May: Waning gibbous, 68% lit
15 May: Waning gibbous, 59% lit16 May: Last quarter at 10:43, 50% lit17 May: Waning crescent, 40% lit18 May: Waning crescent, 31% lit19 May: Waning crescent, 23% lit20 May: Waning crescent, 15% lit21 May: Waning crescent, 9% lit
22 May: Waning crescent, 4% lit23 May: Waning crescent, 1% lit24 May: New Moon at 08:17, 0% lit25 May: Waxing crescent, 2% lit26 May: Waxing crescent, 6% lit27 May: Waxing crescent, 12% lit28 May: Waxing crescent, 20% lit
29 May: Waxing crescent, 30% lit30 May: Waxing crescent, 41% lit31 May: First quarter at 07:37, 52% lit

The main phases in May 2028

  • First quarter Tue 2 May 2028 02:26 UTC
  • Full Moon: Flower Moon Mon 8 May 2028 19:49 UTC
  • Last quarter Tue 16 May 2028 10:43 UTC
  • New Moon Wed 24 May 2028 08:17 UTC
  • First quarter Wed 31 May 2028 07:37 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 Monday 8 May 2028 at 19:49 UTC is the Flower Moon in the Old Farmer's Almanac's list. It is close to being a supermoon: it is 372,910 km from Earth, 83.1% of the way from apogee (404,279 km on 17 May) to perigee (366,534 km on 5 May), and Fred Espenak's test needs 90% or more.

Every full Moon of 2028, with its name, is on full Moons in 2028.

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 2028?

Monday 8 May 2028 at 19:49 UTC. It is the Flower Moon.

When is the new Moon in May 2028?

Wednesday 24 May 2028 at 08:17 UTC.

Is there a supermoon in May 2028?

The full Moon of 8 May 2028 is close to being a supermoon: it is 372,910 km from Earth, 83.1% of the way from apogee (404,279 km on 17 May) to perigee (366,534 km on 5 May), and Fred Espenak's test needs 90% or more.

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

  1. 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
  2. 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)
  3. Fred Espenak, AstroPixels: Full Moon at Perigee (full supermoons), 2001 to 2100, and the test for one
  4. NASA Science: Supermoons
  5. The Old Farmer's Almanac: Full Moon names
  6. The Old Farmer's Almanac: the Hunter's Moon, the full Moon after the Harvest Moon
  7. NASA Watch the Skies: the monthly and seasonal blue moon
  8. NASA Eclipse Web Site (Espenak): eclipse dates
  9. 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
  10. IAU Office of Astronomy for Education: the lunar phases seen from the Southern Hemisphere
  11. 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
  12. LRO Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, LDEM_64 heights (NASA PDS Geosciences Node): the slopes that shade the ground near the terminator
  13. 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
  14. 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
  15. 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
  16. 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
  17. NASA Earth fact sheet: the Earth's radius and geometric albedo, for the earthshine
  18. 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.