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 9 March 2016 at 01:54 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 ∠10° of ♓ Pisces tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Worm Moon of March 2016 after 15 days on 23 March 2016 at 12:01.
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 ∠1947" and ∠1932".
At 14:39 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 199 of Meeus index or lunation 1152 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 11 hours and 16 minutes. It is 1 hour and 47 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 1 hour and 28 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 41 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠319.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠339.5°.
10 days since point of apogee on 27 February 2016 at 03:28 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 10 March 2016 at 07:02 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 368 129 km (228 745 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 359 509 km (223 389 mi).
13 days after ascending node on 24 February 2016 at 06:10 in ♍ Virgo 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 9 March 2016 at 06:31 in ♓ Pisces.
4 days since the last southern standstill on 3 March 2016 at 14:19 in ♐ Sagittarius when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.210° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.206° at the point of next northern standstill on 16 March 2016 at 05:01 in ♋ Cancer.
13 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