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 16 December 2009 at 12:02 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 ∠25° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2009 after 15 days on 31 December 2009 at 19:13.
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 ∠1796" and ∠1950".
At 12:02 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 123 of Meeus index or lunation 1076 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 19 hours and 9 minutes. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2009. It is 31 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 6 hours and 25 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 38 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠135.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠164.3°.
11 days since point of perigee on 4 December 2009 at 14:12 in ♋ Cancer the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 20 December 2009 at 14:54 in ♒ Aquarius.
The Moon is 399 104 km (247 992 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 4 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 731 km (252 110 mi).
11 days after descending node on 5 December 2009 at 03:18 in ♋ Cancer 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 18 December 2009 at 16:41 in ♑ Capricorn.
At 02:38 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-25.769°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2009. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠25.787° at the point of next northern standstill in ♊ Gemini on 30 December 2009 at 10:09.
25 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