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 10 January 2016 at 01:30 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 ∠25° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2016 after 13 days on 24 January 2016 at 01:46.
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 ∠1887" and ∠1951".
At 01:31 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 198 of Meeus index or lunation 1151 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 8 minutes. It is 1 hour and 52 minutes longer 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 24 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 39 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠292.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠319.8°.
8 days since point of apogee on 2 January 2016 at 11:53 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 4 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 15 January 2016 at 02:10 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 379 800 km (235 997 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 369 619 km (229 671 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 31 December 2015 at 20:19 in ♍ Virgo the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 14 January 2016 at 15:48 in ♓ Pisces.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 8 January 2016 at 17:56 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.420° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.375° at the point of next northern standstill on 21 January 2016 at 16:41 in ♊ Gemini.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo 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