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Moonrise & Moonset Calculator

Moonrise and moonset shift by roughly 50 minutes later each calendar day — a direct consequence of the Moon's own ~13°-per-day orbital motion — which makes them meaningfully harder to compute than sunrise and sunset and means the Moon sometimes **skips a rise or set entirely** on a given calendar day. This calculator computes both precisely for any date and location.

Standard altitude: Meeus low-accuracy lunar constant (0.125° mean parallax term, minus 34' mean refraction) · Computed by direct numerical sampling of the Moon's geocentric altitude across the day, since the Moon needs a different rise/set method than the Sun

4.8 average · 50 reviews
James Whitfield

Reviewers

Sarah Mitchell, M.A. in Cultural Astronomy & Astrology and Marcus Reynolds, Professional Astrologer & Astronomer

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127 people find this calculator helpful

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Why Moonrise Is a Genuinely Different Calculation Than Sunrise

The Sun's position changes so slowly day to day that its rise/set can be found with a fast closed-form approximation. The Moon moves roughly 13° per day across the sky — about 13 times faster — which breaks that shortcut. This calculator instead tracks the Moon's actual altitude at fine time steps across the day and finds precisely when it crosses the horizon.

Why a Moonrise or Moonset Can Be Missing

Because the Moon rises about 50 minutes later each day, roughly once a month there's a calendar day where the previous day's moonrise hasn't been followed by a new one before midnight arrives — that day simply has no moonrise (or, on a different day in the cycle, no moonset). This is a normal, expected astronomical fact, not a calculation error.

A Useful Sanity Check: Full Moon Timing

Because a full moon is, by definition, the Sun and Moon in opposition, moonrise on a full moon night falls very close to that same day's sunset, and moonset falls close to the following sunrise — a pattern worth checking against this calculator's Sunrise & Sunset Calculator for the same date.

Moonrise & Moonset Calculator FAQs

Why doesn't the Moon rise and set at the same time every day?
Because the Moon orbits Earth roughly every 27.3 days, it moves about 13° eastward against the stars daily, which delays its rising and setting by roughly 50 minutes on average compared to the day before.
Why does this calculator sometimes show no moonrise or moonset?
This happens roughly once a month, when the Moon's daily ~50-minute delay causes it to skip appearing to rise or set within a specific calendar day — it is expected behavior, not an error.
How accurate is this calculator?
It uses a direct numerical method (fine time-step sampling with linear interpolation) rather than a fast approximation, targeting accuracy to roughly a minute — described honestly as a "low accuracy" method in astronomical terms, though more than sufficient for panchang and muhurta purposes.
Why does moonrise happen near sunset on a full moon?
A full moon is the Sun and Moon positioned opposite each other in the sky, so as the Sun sets in the west, the full Moon is rising in the east — and vice versa near sunrise.
Is this the same calculation used elsewhere on this site?
Yes — the Panchang Calculator surfaces the same moonrise/moonset alongside the five classical limbs for a complete daily reading.

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