Moonrise Direction in India and the Lunar Standstill

The Moon rises in the eastern half of the sky, like the Sun, but it does not keep to one point for long. In about two weeks it covers the stretch of horizon that the sunrise takes six months to cross, and in 2026 and 2027 it goes beyond it. At Delhi the Moon’s rising point reaches 31.9° north of east on 16 February 2027, and 32.0° south of east on 12 November 2026 and 2 February 2027. The Sun, through the whole of 2027, rises between 62.5° and 116.4°: the Moon passes it by 4.4° on the north side and 5.6° on the south.

Those wide swings belong to these particular years. They come from an 18.6-year cycle in how the Moon’s tilted path sits against the equator, which peaked in 2024 and 2025 in what astronomers call a major lunar standstill. The bearings here were computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris for every Delhi moonrise from 1 November 2026 to 31 December 2027, with the moonrise rule the site’s panchang uses: the top edge of the Moon on a flat horizon, refraction allowed for. The 48 festival moonrise times that the site’s 2026 and 2027 tables print for twelve cities are reproduced to the minute by the same calculation.

North to South and Back in a Month

Bearings are counted from true north through east, so 90° is due east, a smaller figure is north of east and a larger one south of it. Every calendar month in the table has a moonrise north of 60° and another south of 120°, and in every month the two extremes fall 12 to 15 days apart, which is half of the Moon’s circuit of the zodiac.

Between one moonrise and the next the bearing can move by up to 8°. The clock time moves too: on average each Delhi moonrise in the table comes 51 minutes later in the day than the one before, and the delay ranges from 28 to 75 minutes. Several of the extremes in the table fall in daylight, when the Sun is up; a rising is a geometric event and does not promise a sighting.

Full Moons: North in Winter, South in Summer

A full moon stands opposite the Sun, so it rises close to the point opposite the one where the Sun sets. In the table below every full-moon rising at Delhi lies within 7° of the point directly opposite that evening’s sunset. That puts the winter full moons on the June Sun’s side of east and the summer full moons on the December Sun’s side, and in these years just after the major standstill the full moons nearest the solstices go a little beyond the Sun’s own extreme: the December 2026 full moon rises at 59.5°, 30.5° north of east, and the June 2027 full moon at 121.4°, 31.4° south of east.

“Nearest Delhi moonrise” is the rising closest in time to the full-moon instant, which can fall before or after it. Moonrise against sunset on each full-moon evening, the tithi at moonrise, and twelve cities for the next Purnimas are on the Purnima moonrise time page. The instants of all four phases are on the moon phase calendar.

Days With No Moonrise

Because each rising comes later than the last, about once a month one calendar day has no moonrise at all: the Moon rises just before midnight, and the next rising falls just after the following midnight. At Delhi this happens on 15 dates in the table’s fourteen months, each within three days of a last-quarter moon: 2 Nov 2026, 1 Dec 2026, 30 Dec 2026, 28 Jan 2027, 26 Feb 2027, 28 Mar 2027, 26 Apr 2027, 27 May 2027, 27 Jun 2027, 27 Jul 2027, 26 Aug 2027, 24 Sep 2027, 23 Oct 2027, 21 Nov 2027 and 20 Dec 2027. A panchang that leaves the moonrise blank on such a date is not missing a figure.

The Lunar Standstill: an 18.6-Year Swing

The Sun’s path is tilted to the equator by a fixed amount, so its sunrise swing is the same every year. The Moon’s path is tilted to the Sun’s by about 5.1°, half the difference between the major and minor figures in the table below, and the direction of that tilt turns round once in 18.6 years. When it adds to the Earth’s tilt, the Moon reaches its greatest distance north and south of the equator and its rising point swings widest: a major standstill. When it subtracts, the swing is narrowest: a minor standstill. The same 18.6 years is also the period the site’s tables give for Rahu and Ketu to go round the zodiac, because the nodes are the two points where the Moon’s tilted path crosses the Sun’s.

The Moon’s greatest declination, its angle north of the equator, reached 28.72° in 2025, and Delhi’s farthest-north moonrise came to 56.9° in 2024. In 2027 the figures are 27.72° and 58.1°, already easing. At the minor standstill of 2034 the greatest declination is only 18.56°, and the Delhi moonrise keeps between 68.9° and 111.3°, inside the Sun’s range. From 2030 to 2038 the Moon never rises at Delhi as far north as the June Sun does; from 2039 it passes it again, on the way to the next major standstill in 2043. Half the sum of the major and minor declinations, 23.6°, comes out close to the tilt of the Earth’s own axis, which is the part of the swing the Sun shares.

The years of the largest declinations are also the years when the Moon goes beyond the Sun’s farthest reach north and south, which the out-of-bounds Moon page dates fortnight by fortnight.

Twelve Cities

Over the fourteen months every one of the twelve cities has its farthest-north moonrise on 16 February 2027 and its farthest-south on 2 February 2027; at Delhi the rising of 12 November 2026 ties that bearing to a tenth of a degree. As with the Sun, the swing is wider farther north. The clock times differ from city to city, mainly with each city’s longitude.

What This Page Does Not Claim

The bearings assume a flat, open horizon at sea level, measured from true north; a magnetic compass and a hill or a building both change what an observer finds. Nothing here says the Moon will be seen at a given time. The page also makes no reading. Chandra vasa, the Moon’s “residence”, is a direction the travel rules of the muhurta tradition assign by the sign the Moon is passing through. It is a different idea and is not the rising bearing; it is set out on the chandra vasa page.

In Brief

• Range at Delhi, Nov 2026 to Dec 2027: 58.1° to 122.0°, from 31.9° north of east to 32.0° south of east
• Wider than the Sun: by 4.4° north and 5.6° south
• Full moons: far north of east in winter, far south in summer
• Moonless dates: 15 at Delhi in the fourteen months, near the last quarters
• The cycle: major standstill 2024–25, minor 2034, next major 2043

The Sun’s own swing through the year, with the two due-east mornings, is on the sunrise direction page. The first crescent after each new moon, with sunset and moonset in twelve cities, is on the Chandra Darshan page. In Hindi: चंद्रमा किस दिशा में उगता है: चंद्रोदय और 18.6 वर्ष का चक्र.