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 27 December 2008 at 12:23 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 ∠6° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2009 after 14 days on 11 January 2009 at 03:27.
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 ∠1768" and ∠1951".
At 12:22 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 111 of Meeus index or lunation 1064 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2008. It is 1 hour and 53 minutes longer than the next lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to decrease with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at perigee (∠0° or ∠360°).
The length of the current synodic month is 6 hours and 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 14 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠186.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠213.2°.
1 day since point of apogee on 26 December 2008 at 17:50 in ♐ Sagittarius the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 13 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 January 2009 at 10:52 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 405 343 km (251 868 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 13 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 501 km (222 141 mi).
11 days after descending node on 15 December 2008 at 23:02 in ♌ Leo 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 30 December 2008 at 07:40 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 26 December 2008 at 08:03 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.026° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 12 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.060° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 January 2009 at 05:38 in ♊ Gemini.
24 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♒ Aquarius 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