New Moon on . The illuminated surface of the Moon is 0%. Lunar cycle is less than 1 day young.
* The exact date and time of this New Moon phase is on 22 December 2014 at 01:36 UTC.
The moon rises at sunrise and sets at sunset. It's part facing the Earth is completely in shadow.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠6° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2015 after 13 days on 5 January 2015 at 04:53.
There is high New Moon ocean tide on this date. Combined Sun and Moon gravitational tidal force working on Earth is strong, because of the Sun-Moon-Earth syzygy alignment.
Lunar disc is not visible from Earth. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1927" and ∠1951".
At 01:36 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 185 of Meeus index or lunation 1138 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 38 minutes. It is 1 hour and 4 minutes longer than the next lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 1 hour and 6 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 3 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠318° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠338.3°.
9 days since point of apogee on 12 December 2014 at 23:02 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 24 December 2014 at 16:43 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 371 880 km (231 076 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 791 km (226 671 mi).
5 days after ascending node on 16 December 2014 at 13:27 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 29 December 2014 at 09:27 in ♈ Aries.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 21 December 2014 at 18:25 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.665° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.650° at the point of next northern standstill on 3 January 2015 at 17:53 in ♊ Gemini.
5 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first part of the lunar cycle.
The Moon is in a New Moon geocentric conjunction with the Sun and thus forming Sun-Moon-Earth syzygy alignment.
Parts of this Lunar Calendar are based on Planetary Ephemeris Data Courtesy of Fred Espenak, www.Astropixels.com
Moon phase image credit to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, svs.gsfc.nasa.gov