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 24 March 2020 at 09:28 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 ∠5° of ♈ Aries tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Pink Moon of April 2020 after 14 days on 8 April 2020 at 02:35.
There is extremely high New Moon ocean tide on this date. Combined Sun and Moon gravitational tidal force working on Earth is heavy, because of the Sun-Moon-Earth syzygy alignment and the near perigee.
Lunar disc is not visible from Earth. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1924".
At 09:28 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 250 of Meeus index or lunation 1203 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 58 minutes. It is 1 hour and 45 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 14 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 2 hours and 49 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠177.9° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠201.8°.
Moon is at apogee at 15:23 about 14 days since last perigee on 10 March 2020 at 06:33 in ♍ Virgo the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 7 April 2020 at 18:08 in ♎ Libra.
This apogee Moon is 406 690 km (252 705 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest apogee of 2020. It is 1 282 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 19 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
7 days after descending node on 17 March 2020 at 01:00 in ♑ Capricorn 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 31 March 2020 at 16:51 in ♊ Gemini.
6 days since the last southern standstill on 17 March 2020 at 14:07 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.540° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 7 days to face maximum declination of ∠23.702° at the point of next northern standstill on 1 April 2020 at 09:12 in ♋ Cancer.
19 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini 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