Moonrise Moonset Calculator - Moon Times for Any Date and Place

Use the free tool below: your data never leaves your browser — all work happens on your device, and nothing is uploaded to any server.

Why moon times move so much

The Moon is a restless neighbour. It rises about 50 minutes later each day, it swings far north and far south over the month, and on some days it does not rise or set at all in the usual sense. That is why a moon time from yesterday is useless today, and why photographers, fishermen, and night-sky watchers all need a calculator rather than a rule of thumb. This tool computes moonrise and moonset for any date, latitude, and longitude, along with illumination, phase name, and moon age, so you can plan a shoot, a walk, or a night of stargazing around the real Moon.

Enter the date and your coordinates, and the tool returns the times in your device’s time zone. Hills, buildings, and refraction near the horizon shift the real rise and set by minutes, and near the poles the Moon may stay up or down for days at a time, which the tool reports honestly instead of inventing a time.

How moonrise and moonset work

The Moon orbits Earth in about 27.3 days relative to the stars, and about 29.5 days from one new Moon to the next, because Earth itself moves around the Sun in the meantime. Each day the Moon moves about 13 degrees east against the stars, so Earth must turn a little further to bring it back over your horizon, which is where the roughly 50 minute daily delay comes from. The Moon’s path also tilts: it can rise far to the north-east in one part of the month and far to the south-east in another, which changes how long it stays up and how high it climbs.

Moonrise and moonset are not symmetric like sunrise and sunset. The Moon may rise in the afternoon and set after midnight, or rise near midnight and set in the morning, and the pair of times shown for one calendar date can belong to two different nights. That is normal, not an error.

A worked example

Take London on 27 October 2026. The tool shows a Moon well past full, roughly two-thirds lit and waning, rising in the evening and setting in the morning. A photographer chasing a moonrise over a landmark would set up before the rise time, facing the direction the Moon will appear, which on that date is roughly east. A stargazer wanting dark skies would instead note that the Moon is up for most of the night and plan the faint-target session for a later date, closer to new Moon. Both plans use the same two numbers, but they use them in opposite ways, which is why the tool shows illumination and phase alongside the times.

Compare that with a date near new Moon, when the Moon rises and sets with the Sun and is barely lit. The sky stays dark all night, which is perfect for galaxies and meteor showers, but there is no Moon to photograph.

Using moon times well

For moonrise photos, arrive at least 30 minutes early. The Moon looks largest near the horizon, and the best light lasts only minutes.
For dark-sky observing, pick nights when the Moon is below the horizon for most of your session, not just at the start.
For tides and coastal walks, remember that high tides follow the Moon by a local lag, so moon times alone do not give tide times.
For camping and night walks, a rising Moon is free light. A full Moon can light a path well enough to walk without a torch.
Always pair moon times with a weather forecast. A perfectly timed moonrise behind thick cloud is no moonrise at all.

Phases, simply explained

The Moon’s phase is just geometry. Sunlight always lights half the Moon, and the phase you see depends on how much of that lit half faces Earth. At new Moon the lit half faces away from us, so we see darkness. At full Moon it faces us, so we see a bright disc. In between, the lit part grows through crescent and gibbous to full, then shrinks back. Moon age counts days since new Moon, from 0 to about 29.5, and it is the simplest way to describe where the Moon is in its cycle without jargon.

Frequently asked questions

Why is there sometimes no moonrise on a date? Because the Moon rises every 24 hours and 50 minutes on average, so occasionally a calendar day is skipped. The Moon still rises, just on the neighbouring date, and the tool reports the situation for the date you entered.

Why do moon times differ between websites? Small differences come from different definitions of rise and set, different handling of refraction, and different time zones. A few minutes of difference is normal and does not mean either source is wrong.

Can the Moon rise in the west? No, it always rises in the east and sets in the west, but the exact compass point swings widely north and south over the month, so east can mean north-east or south-east depending on the date.

Use the calculator above before your next night out: enter the date and your coordinates, check rise, set, illumination, and phase together, and plan around the Moon instead of being surprised by it.

Moonrise Moonset Calculator – Moon Times for Any Date and Place