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 16 April 2018 at 01:57 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 ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2018 after 13 days on 30 April 2018 at 00:58.
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 ∠1895" and ∠1912".
At 01:57 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 226 of Meeus index or lunation 1179 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 51 minutes. It is 1 hour and 56 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 2 hours and 53 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 16 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠296.5° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠321.7°.
8 days since point of apogee on 8 April 2018 at 05:32 in ♑ Capricorn 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 20 April 2018 at 14:44 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 378 245 km (235 031 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 4 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 368 713 km (229 108 mi).
6 days after descending node on 10 April 2018 at 08:09 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 7 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 23 April 2018 at 12:19 in ♌ Leo.
8 days since the last southern standstill on 7 April 2018 at 14:37 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.320° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 4 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.445° at the point of next northern standstill on 21 April 2018 at 07:38 in ♋ Cancer.
20 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♌ Leo 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