Full Moon August 2026: Partial Lunar Eclipse in Pisces

Detail	August 2026 full moon
Date	Friday, August 28, 2026 (night of Thursday, August 27)
Full moon, US Eastern	12:19 a.m. EDT
Full moon, UTC	04:19 UTC
Greatest eclipse	12:13 a.m. EDT, 04:13 UTC
Moon sign	Pisces, about 5 degrees
Sun opposite	Virgo
Eclipse	partial lunar eclipse
Traditional name	Sturgeon Moon
Previous new moon	August 12, 1:37 p.m. EDT, total solar eclipse in Leo
All 2026 full moons	Full moon 2026 calendar

How the eclipse played out

An eclipse of the Moon happens when a full moon falls close to a lunar node, one of the two points where the Moon's tilted orbit crosses the Sun's path, so Earth's shadow lands on the Moon. On August 28 the alignment was close but not perfect. By the site's eclipse calculation the Moon dipped about 93 percent of its diameter into the umbra, the dark core of Earth's shadow, which left a thin bright edge at maximum.

In Eastern time the faint outer shadow touched the Moon at about 9:22 p.m. on August 27, the partial phase began at 10:34 p.m., greatest eclipse came at 12:13 a.m., the partial phase ended at 1:53 a.m., and the last trace of shadow left at 3:04 a.m. New York had the Moon above the horizon for all of it. In Los Angeles the Moon rose after the outer shadow had already arrived, and it was up for the whole partial phase, from 7:34 p.m. PDT onward.

Sturgeon Moon and the rest of the folklore

In the North American almanac list the August full moon is the Sturgeon Moon, a name usually linked to the large fish once caught in the Great Lakes in late summer. In 2026 the name sat on an eclipse, which some people call a blood moon whenever the Moon darkens. Strictly speaking that name belongs to a total eclipse, when the whole disk turns copper red, and the year's only total one came on March 3.

The sky facts and the astrological layer

The astronomy: the full moon stood just under 5 degrees of Pisces in the tropical zodiac, opposite the Sun in Virgo. Two weeks earlier, on August 12 at 1:37 p.m. EDT, the new moon in Leo had been a total solar eclipse, with totality crossing Greenland, Iceland and then northern Spain. New York saw only a small partial eclipse that afternoon. The two eclipses form the second pair of 2026, a solar one and a lunar one, two weeks apart.

The astrological reading treats eclipses as turning points, a stronger kind of full moon. Pisces is read as the sign of surrender, imagination and compassion, and Virgo, holding the Sun, as the sign of order, service and practical care. An eclipse on this axis is read as a moment when a carefully managed routine meets something that cannot be managed, and when it pays to let a plan bend instead of break. Why eclipses matter goes deeper into how astrologers read them.

Finding it in your chart

Look at your birth chart for planets near 5 degrees of Pisces or Virgo, or of Gemini or Sagittarius. Those placements had the closest contact, and eclipses are traditionally read as having a longer tail than ordinary full moons, often months. The house holding early Pisces shows which part of life the eclipse stirred, and early Virgo shows where you had to keep things running in the meantime.

Before and after

The previous full moon was the July 2026 full moon in Aquarius on July 29. The next was the September 2026 full moon in Aries, the Harvest Moon. For every full moon and both eclipse pairs in one place, see the full moon 2026 calendar and the moon and eclipses guide. The lunar calendar gives eclipse dates and full moon times for your own location.