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 24 December 2011 at 18:06 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 ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♑ Capricorn later.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2012 after 15 days on 9 January 2012 at 07:30.
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 ∠1924" and ∠1951".
At 18:06 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 148 of Meeus index or lunation 1101 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 33 minutes. It is 1 hour and 22 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 49 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 14 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠42.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠70.8°.
2 days since point of perigee on 22 December 2011 at 02:56 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 9 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 January 2012 at 20:19 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 372 481 km (231 449 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 580 km (251 394 mi).
1 day after ascending node on 23 December 2011 at 11:36 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 13 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 6 January 2012 at 14:30 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 23 December 2011 at 17:25 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-22.554° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 13 days to face maximum declination of ∠22.539° at the point of next northern standstill on 6 January 2012 at 21:46 in ♊ Gemini.
1 day since the beginning of this draconic month in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first 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