Moon phase today, September 30, 2026

Waning gibbous

83% of the Moon's face is lit (at 12:00 UTC).

Phase	Waning gibbous
Lit	83% at 12:00 UTC
Age of the cycle	Day 20 of about 29.5 (19.4 days since the new Moon on September 11)
Waxing or waning	Waning: the lit part is shrinking toward the new Moon
This cycle	New Moon September 11, full Moon September 26, next new Moon October 10

Is it a full Moon tonight?

No. The next full Moon is on Monday, October 26, 2026 at 04:12 UTC, 26 days from today.

The next new Moon, quarters and full Moon

Last quarterSaturday, October 3, 2026 at 13:25 UTC
New MoonSaturday, October 10, 2026 at 15:50 UTC
First quarterSunday, October 18, 2026 at 16:13 UTC
Full MoonMonday, October 26, 2026 at 04:12 UTC

Times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to the minute, and agree with NASA's published table of Moon phases to within two minutes. Where your browser allows, your own clock is shown under each.

What the waning gibbous traditionally stands for

After the full Moon, tradition turns to sharing and gratitude: passing on what you have learned, and noticing what went well.

This is what astrological tradition ties to the phase. It isn't a forecast: a phase is a moment in the sky, and nothing on this page predicts events.

Moon calendar

This month: September 2026 · Next month: October 2026

The phases of the Moon, plainly

The Moon doesn't make its own light. We see the half of it that faces the Sun, and how much of that half faces us changes as the Moon goes around the Earth.

At the new Moon it sits roughly between the Earth and the Sun, with its lit side turned away from us. Over the next two weeks more of the lit side comes into view: the waxing crescent, the first quarter, when half the disc is lit, and the waxing gibbous, until the full Moon, when the Earth is between the two. Over the following two weeks the lit part shrinks again through the waning gibbous, the last quarter and the waning crescent, back to the next new Moon.

One cycle from new Moon to new Moon takes about 29.5 days on average, a few hours more or less each time, because the Moon's path around the Earth isn't a circle.

What the numbers mean

Lit: the share of the Moon's face that sunlight reaches, as seen from Earth, at 12:00 UTC. A quarter Moon is 50% lit.
Age of the cycle: days since the last new Moon. Day 1 is the day of the new Moon.
New Moon, quarters and full Moon are moments, not days: the instant the Moon reaches that point. This page names a day after the phase whose moment falls on it in UTC, so a phase late in the UTC day falls on the evening before in the Americas; the times on your own clock show when it is where you are.

How it is worked out

The times of the phases come from the standard astronomical formulas for the Moon's position, corrected for the small difference between the clock of the solar system and the clock on Earth, and are checked against NASA's published table of phases. How much of the Moon is lit comes from the angle between the Sun and the Moon as seen from Earth, good to about one percent.

Moon calendars by month

Today's horoscope for every sign, read from the Moon's phase