New Moon on . The illuminated surface of the Moon is 0%. Lunar cycle is 1 day young.
* The exact date and time of this New Moon phase is on 18 April 2015 at 18:57 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 ∠24° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2015 after 15 days on 4 May 2015 at 03:42.
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 ∠1951" and ∠1911".
At 18:57 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 189 of Meeus index or lunation 1142 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 16 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2015. It is 36 minutes shorter than the next lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 3 hours and 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 41 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠27.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠48.8°.
1 day since point of perigee on 17 April 2015 at 03:53 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 29 April 2015 at 03:55 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 367 365 km (228 270 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 085 km (251 708 mi).
1 day after descending node on 17 April 2015 at 13:07 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 12 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 May 2015 at 09:50 in ♎ Libra.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 10 April 2015 at 07:46 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.250° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.280° at the point of next northern standstill on 22 April 2015 at 23:26 in ♊ Gemini.
14 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra the Moon is navigating from the second to the final 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