New Moon on . The illuminated surface of the Moon is 1%. Lunar cycle is 1 day young.
* The exact date and time of this New Moon phase is on 2 January 2003 at 20:23 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 ∠21° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2003 after 14 days on 18 January 2003 at 10:48.
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 ∠1879" and ∠1951".
At 20:23 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 37 of Meeus index or lunation 990 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 26 minutes. It is 1 hour and 21 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 1 hour and 41 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 21 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠56.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠90.6°.
4 days since point of perigee on 30 December 2002 at 01:06 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 7 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 11 January 2003 at 00:43 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 381 516 km (237 063 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 7 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 343 km (251 247 mi).
3 days after descending node on 31 December 2002 at 11:16 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 14 January 2003 at 13:38 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 2 January 2003 at 16:56 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-25.783° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠25.794° at the point of next northern standstill on 17 January 2003 at 02:11 in ♋ Cancer.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini 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