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 December 2017 at 06:31 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 ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 15 days on 2 January 2018 at 02:24.
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 ∠1772" and ∠1950".
At 11:42 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 221 of Meeus index or lunation 1174 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 48 minutes. It is 59 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 6 hours and 4 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 59 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠147° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠173.3°.
13 days since point of perigee on 4 December 2017 at 08:42 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 19 December 2017 at 01:27 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 404 537 km (251 368 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next day until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 605 km (252 653 mi).
9 days after ascending node on 8 December 2017 at 00:39 in ♌ Leo 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 22 December 2017 at 10:04 in ♒ Aquarius.
12 days since the last northern standstill on 5 December 2017 at 11:43 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠20.015° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-20.062° at the point of next southern standstill on 19 December 2017 at 09:31 in ♑ Capricorn.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo 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