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 22 May 2020 at 17:39 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 ∠12° of ♊ Gemini tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon of June 2020 after 13 days on 5 June 2020 at 19:12.
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 ∠1816" and ∠1895".
At 17:39 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 252 of Meeus index or lunation 1205 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 13 hours and 3 minutes. It is 2 hours and 11 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 19 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 6 hours and 44 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠229.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠263.8°.
5 days since point of apogee on 18 May 2020 at 07:45 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 3 June 2020 at 03:36 in ♏ Scorpio.
The Moon is 394 795 km (245 314 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next 10 days until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 364 366 km (226 407 mi).
13 days after descending node on 10 May 2020 at 09:01 in ♐ Sagittarius 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 24 May 2020 at 21:34 in ♊ Gemini.
12 days since the last southern standstill on 11 May 2020 at 06:13 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-23.998° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 2 days to face maximum declination of ∠24.055° at the point of next northern standstill on 25 May 2020 at 21:16 in ♋ Cancer.
25 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