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 20 March 2004 at 22:41 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 ∠8° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2004 after 14 days on 5 April 2004 at 11:03.
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 ∠1831" and ∠1926".
At 22:41 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 52 of Meeus index or lunation 1005 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 14 hours and 40 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 56 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 5 hours and 7 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠93.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠129.7°.
9 days since point of perigee on 12 March 2004 at 03:37 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 5 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 27 March 2004 at 07:02 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 391 422 km (243 218 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 5 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 520 km (251 357 mi).
10 days after descending node on 10 March 2004 at 23:05 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 2 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 24 March 2004 at 04:55 in ♉ Taurus.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 14 March 2004 at 19:20 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.445° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.541° at the point of next northern standstill on 28 March 2004 at 19:53 in ♋ Cancer.
24 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