Luna torera

The Moon will be northernmost for this year on February 25 (about 23h by Universal Time). It will reach declination 28.43°, almost as high as it can be above the northernmost arch of the ecliptic. It will be close to Beta Tauri, called El Nath, “the butting [star],” because it marks the tip of the northern horn of Taurus the bull. Indeed the Moon will occult that star, as seen from parts of eastern Asia and Oceania. We hope the bull does not gore the daring Moon as she leaps over.

As explained on page 89 of Astronomical Calendar 2026, the northern and southern extremes that the Moon can reach depend on the ascending and descending nodes of its orbit, which keep shifting along the ecliptic.

2025 was what I call a “hilly” year, in which the ascending node coincided with the ascending node of the ecliptic itself across the equator, at longitude 0°, in Pisces, so that the Moon attained 28.71° on March 7.

Here for fun is a color-inverted – and perhaps better – version that I created accidentally when talking about this topic in 2015.

And here is the sky scene above the southern horizon as close as possible (for the American location) to the Moon’s northernmost moment.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations. The Moon is exaggerated 4 times in size. It is shown at its apparent position for the location on Earth, displaced by parallax; the arrows are along its path as seen from the center of the Earth.

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