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 15 May 2018 at 11:48 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 ∠25° of ♉ Taurus tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Flower Moon of May 2018 after 14 days on 29 May 2018 at 14:20.
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 ∠1927" and ∠1898".
At 11:48 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 227 of Meeus index or lunation 1180 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 55 minutes. It is 50 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 4 hours and 49 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 1 hour and 20 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠321.7° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠340.3°.
9 days since point of apogee on 6 May 2018 at 00:35 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 2 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 17 May 2018 at 21:06 in ♊ Gemini.
The Moon is 371 893 km (231 084 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 2 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 363 777 km (226 041 mi).
8 days after descending node on 7 May 2018 at 10:24 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 20 May 2018 at 13:13 in ♌ Leo.
10 days since the last southern standstill on 4 May 2018 at 23:00 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-20.562° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 3 days to face maximum declination of ∠20.652° at the point of next northern standstill on 18 May 2018 at 15:02 in ♋ Cancer.
21 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