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 21 April 2012 at 07:18 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 ∠22° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2012 after 15 days on 6 May 2012 at 03:35.
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 ∠1775" and ∠1909".
At 14:37 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 151 of Meeus index or lunation 1104 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 41 minutes. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2012. It is 12 minutes longer 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 3 hours and 57 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 6 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠142.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠168.7°.
12 days since point of perigee on 7 April 2012 at 16:59 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 22 April 2012 at 13:49 in ♉ Taurus.
The Moon is 403 798 km (250 908 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 2 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 422 km (252 539 mi).
10 days after ascending node on 10 April 2012 at 00:47 in ♐ Sagittarius the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 3 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 24 April 2012 at 03:44 in ♊ Gemini.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 10 April 2012 at 21:03 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-21.814° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠21.738° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 April 2012 at 05:37 in ♊ Gemini.
10 days 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