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 20 August 2009 at 10:01 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 ∠1° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♍ Virgo later.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2009 after 15 days on 4 September 2009 at 16:03.
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 ∠1956" and ∠1897".
At 10:02 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 119 of Meeus index or lunation 1072 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 43 minutes. It is 2 hours and 6 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 4 hours and 1 minute shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 8 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠20.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠39.3°.
1 day since point of perigee on 19 August 2009 at 04:53 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 31 August 2009 at 11:04 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 366 473 km (227 716 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 269 km (251 822 mi).
1 day after descending node on 18 August 2009 at 14:06 in ♋ Cancer 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 1 September 2009 at 03:18 in ♑ Capricorn.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 15 August 2009 at 21:54 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.442° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 8 days to face maximum declination of ∠-26.391° at the point of next southern standstill on 28 August 2009 at 20:17 in ♐ Sagittarius.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♑ Capricorn 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