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 12 December 2004 at 01:29 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 leaving the last ∠3° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2004 after 14 days on 26 December 2004 at 15:06.
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 ∠1968" and ∠1949".
At 01:29 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 61 of Meeus index or lunation 1014 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 34 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2004. It is 9 minutes longer 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 2 hours and 10 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 59 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠345.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠1.4°.
Moon is at perigee at 21:30 about 12 days since last apogee on 30 November 2004 at 11:25 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 15 days until point of next apogee on 27 December 2004 at 19:15 in ♋ Cancer.
This perigee Moon is 357 986 km (222 442 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 522 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 370 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
3 days after descending node on 8 December 2004 at 16:57 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 8 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 21 December 2004 at 06:51 in ♉ Taurus.
13 days since the last northern standstill on 29 November 2004 at 08:28 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.963° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.935° at the point of next southern standstill on 13 December 2004 at 00:27 in ♑ Capricorn.
18 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