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 20 March 2015 at 09:36 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 first ∠1° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2015 after 15 days on 4 April 2015 at 12:06.
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 ∠1968" and ∠1927".
At 09:36 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 188 of Meeus index or lunation 1141 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 21 minutes. It is 5 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 23 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 46 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠9.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠27.1°.
1 day since point of perigee on 19 March 2015 at 19:38 in ♓ Pisces the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 1 April 2015 at 12:59 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 364 222 km (226 317 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 012 km (252 284 mi).
12 days after ascending node on 7 March 2015 at 21:04 in ♎ Libra the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 March 2015 at 02:19 in ♈ Aries.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 14 March 2015 at 01:39 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.262° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 6 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.241° at the point of next northern standstill on 26 March 2015 at 14:29 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra 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