Perfect Moonrises/Moonsets 2013

New Bern, NC

I blogged several times before about perfect moonrises.  The idea fascinates me.   In short, I define a perfect moonrise as being at the right place at the right time to see the moon rise perfect synchronism with the sun set.

For example. On January 27, 2013 at 05:38 GMT you were sailing in the Pacific Ocean in the neighborhood of Tonga.this is what you would see looking out toward the East and the West.  The key point is that the moon is rising while the sun is setting.  On the other side of the world, 180 degrees away, at the same instant of time, another person would see the moon setting in West as the sun rose in the East.  (By the way, I made these pictures using the free planetarium program called Stellarium.)

Looking East

Looking West

I also once published a year's forecast of when and where to be on the globe to witness a perfect moonrise.  I was about to repeat it for 2013 when I realized that I did it wrong.  I considered only longitude and not latitude.  On January 27, 2013 the sun will not rise in the far North nor set in the far South.  You can see the entire loci of points to view the perfect moonrise at that instant in the picture below.  It ranges from Greenland, to Helsinki, to Madagascar for perfect moonrises and from Hudson Bay to San Diego, CA to Antartica for moonsets.  

View of the globe at the instant of the next full moon.

Anyhow, below you can see the times of 2013 full moons.  You will have to figure out for yourself where to be to view the perfect moonrises.

Year	Month	Day	GMT	Day of Week
2013	Jan	27	5:38	Sun
2013	Feb	25	21:26	Mon
2013	Mar	27	10:27	Wed
2013	Apr	25	21:57	Thu
2013	May	25	6:25	Sat
2013	Jun	23	13:32	Sun
2013	Jul	22	10:15	Mon
2013	Aug	21	3:44	Wed
2013	Sep	19	13:12	Thu
2013	Oct	19	1:37	Sat
2013	Nov	17	16:15	Sun