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 18 May 2015 at 04:13 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 ∠17° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2015 after 16 days on 2 June 2015 at 16:19.
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 ∠1897".
At 18:57 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 189 of Meeus index or lunation 1142 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 16 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2015. It is 36 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 3 hours and 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 41 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠27.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠48.8°.
2 days since point of perigee on 15 May 2015 at 00:23 in ♈ Aries 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 26 May 2015 at 22:12 in ♍ Virgo.
The Moon is 372 486 km (231 452 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 9 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 246 km (251 187 mi).
2 days after descending node on 14 May 2015 at 20:37 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 May 2015 at 14:40 in ♎ Libra.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 7 May 2015 at 13:39 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.343° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.389° at the point of next northern standstill on 20 May 2015 at 09:41 in ♊ Gemini.
16 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♎ Libra 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