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 17 January 2018 at 02:17 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 first ∠2° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2018 after 14 days on 31 January 2018 at 13:27.
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 ∠1776" and ∠1950".
At 02:17 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 223 of Meeus index or lunation 1176 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 18 hours and 48 minutes. This is the year's longest synodic month of 2018. It is 2 hours and 42 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 7 hours and 3 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 ∠198.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠227.1°.
2 days since point of apogee on 15 January 2018 at 02:10 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 30 January 2018 at 09:54 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 403 532 km (250 743 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 12 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 995 km (223 069 mi).
13 days after ascending node on 4 January 2018 at 07:48 in ♌ Leo 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 18 January 2018 at 14:28 in ♒ Aquarius.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 15 January 2018 at 16:28 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.048° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.027° at the point of next northern standstill on 29 January 2018 at 11:32 in ♋ Cancer.
13 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