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 26 December 2019 at 05:13 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 ∠8° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2020 after 15 days on 10 January 2020 at 19:21.
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 ∠1850" and ∠1951".
At 05:13 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 247 of Meeus index or lunation 1200 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 29 minutes. It is 1 hour and 21 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 3 hours and 45 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 18 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠82.6° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠120.5°.
7 days since point of perigee on 18 December 2019 at 20:30 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 6 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 2 January 2020 at 01:30 in ♓ Pisces.
The Moon is 387 455 km (240 753 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 6 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 404 580 km (251 394 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♑ Capricorn at 13:01 crossing the ecliptic from North to South. Lunar position remains south of if for the upcoming 14 days until Moon's next ascending node later on 9 January 2020 at 23:29 in ♋ Cancer.
At 20:11 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-23.227°. This is the year's southernmost lunar standstill of 2019. Over the upcoming 14 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠23.223° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 10 January 2020 at 06:03.
12 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♋ Cancer the Moon is navigating from the middle to the last 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