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 23 December 2003 at 09:43 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 first ∠3° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2004 after 15 days on 7 January 2004 at 15:40.
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 ∠1961" and ∠1951".
At 09:43 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 49 of Meeus index or lunation 1002 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 22 minutes. It is 51 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 22 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 47 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠15.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠33.9°.
1 day since point of perigee on 22 December 2003 at 11:53 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 11 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 3 January 2004 at 20:19 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 365 447 km (227 078 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 11 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 707 km (252 095 mi).
2 days after descending node on 20 December 2003 at 16:07 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 10 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 2 January 2004 at 20:11 in ♉ Taurus.
At 20:12 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.044°. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.031° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 6 January 2004 at 21:36.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus 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