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 29 August 2011 at 03:04 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 ∠11° of ♍ Virgo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Harvest Moon of September 2011 after 13 days on 12 September 2011 at 09:27.
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 ∠1953" and ∠1900".
At 03:04 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 144 of Meeus index or lunation 1097 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 8 hours and 5 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2011. It is 42 minutes shorter 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 4 hours and 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 30 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠333.4° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠350.1°.
10 days since point of apogee on 18 August 2011 at 16:23 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 August 2011 at 17:35 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 367 003 km (228 045 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 360 858 km (224 227 mi).
5 days after descending node on 23 August 2011 at 17:23 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 5 September 2011 at 07:36 in ♐ Sagittarius.
5 days since the last northern standstill on 23 August 2011 at 12:17 in ♊ Gemini when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠23.149° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠-23.047° at the point of next southern standstill on 5 September 2011 at 05:01 in ♐ Sagittarius.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius 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