New Moon on . The illuminated surface of the Moon is 1%. Lunar cycle is 1 day young.
* The exact date and time of this New Moon phase is on 18 October 2009 at 05:33 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 ∠15° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Beaver Moon of November 2009 after 16 days on 2 November 2009 at 19:14.
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 ∠1899" and ∠1926".
At 18:44 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 120 of Meeus index or lunation 1073 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 49 minutes. It is 2 hours and 52 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 55 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 14 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠39.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠65.2°.
3 days since point of perigee on 13 October 2009 at 12:28 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 8 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 25 October 2009 at 23:18 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 377 369 km (234 486 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 8 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 168 km (251 138 mi).
5 days after descending node on 11 October 2009 at 23:01 in ♋ Cancer the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 25 October 2009 at 08:52 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 days since the last northern standstill on 9 October 2009 at 09:49 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠26.057° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-25.951° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 October 2009 at 12:10 in ♐ Sagittarius.
19 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