Nashville, Tennessee Moonrise & Moonset Times

Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, occupies a limestone basin along the Cumberland River where forested ridges encircle the city and the river's wide bends create natural amphitheaters for moonlight. Today's moonrise is at 21:39 and moonset at 06:03. When the moon rises above the hills east of the city, its glow descends into the basin and catches the full-scale Parthenon replica in Centennial Park, lending the marble columns an ethereal radiance, while the Cumberland River wrapping around downtown fragments the reflection into countless bright facets that drift beneath the Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge.

Shelby Bottoms Greenway, an expansive floodplain park on the river's east bank, offers meadows and wetlands where the full moon illuminates great blue herons wading in the shallows and transforms the paved trail into a ribbon of pale light winding through the bottomland forest. Radnor Lake State Natural Area, nestled in a wooded hollow south of the city, provides one of Middle Tennessee's most intimate moongazing experiences — the small lake mirrors the orb perfectly, and the surrounding ridgeline blocks all artificial light, creating a pocket of darkness where the moon reigns unchallenged. Autumn and early winter, when the Nashville Basin's humidity drops and the hardwood canopy opens, yield the sharpest views — vivid enough to sketch the dark plains of Mare Tranquillitatis from a park bench.

Knowing when the moon rises and sets helps plan evening walks across the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge, late paddles on Percy Priest Lake, or after-dark drives along the Natchez Trace Parkway as it winds through the wooded ridges southwest of the metro. Nashville's basin-and-ridge topography means the moon often appears to emerge from behind a tree-lined hill rather than from a flat horizon, adding an element of surprise — a bright disc suddenly filling the gap between two ridges and flooding the valley with light that transforms the city of music into a city of luminous stillness.