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 13 July 2018 at 02:48 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 ∠11° of ♋ Cancer tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Buck Moon of July 2018 after 15 days on 27 July 2018 at 20:20.
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 ∠1969" and ∠1887".
At 19:43 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 228 of Meeus index or lunation 1181 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 7 hours and 5 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2018. It is 5 minutes shorter 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 5 hours and 39 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 30 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠340.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠356°.
12 days since point of apogee on 30 June 2018 at 02:43 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 13 July 2018 at 08:28 in ♋ Cancer.
The Moon is 364 004 km (226 182 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 357 432 km (222 098 mi).
11 days after descending node on 30 June 2018 at 16:44 in ♒ Aquarius the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following day until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 14 July 2018 at 02:50 in ♌ Leo.
At 12:01 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach North declination of ∠20.761°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt southward to face maximum declination of ∠-20.755° at the point of next southern standstill in ♑ Capricorn on 25 July 2018 at 20:55.
25 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer 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