New Moon on . The illuminated surface of the Moon is 0%. Lunar cycle is 1 day young.
* The exact date and time of this New Moon phase is on 6 May 2016 at 19:30 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 ∠12° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2016 after 15 days on 21 May 2016 at 21:15.
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 ∠1970" and ∠1901".
At 19:29 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 202 of Meeus index or lunation 1155 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 30 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2016. It is 31 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 5 hours and 14 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 55 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠10.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠27.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 04:14 about 14 days since last apogee on 21 April 2016 at 16:05 in ♎ Libra the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 18 May 2016 at 22:06 in ♎ Libra.
This perigee Moon is 357 828 km (222 344 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 680 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 528 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
3 days after descending node on 3 May 2016 at 01:27 in ♓ Pisces the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 15 May 2016 at 20:39 in ♍ Virgo.
9 days since the last southern standstill on 27 April 2016 at 04:44 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-18.382° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠18.447° at the point of next northern standstill on 9 May 2016 at 21:54 in ♊ Gemini.
17 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♍ Virgo 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