New Moon on . The illuminated surface of the Moon is 0%. Lunar cycle is 1 day young.
* The exact date and time of this New Moon phase is on 16 October 2020 at 19:31 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 ∠19° of ♎ Libra tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Hunter Moon of October 2020 after 15 days on 31 October 2020 at 14:49.
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 ∠1971" and ∠1925".
At 19:31 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 257 of Meeus index or lunation 1210 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 9 hours and 36 minutes. It is 1 hour and 33 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 8 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 1 minute longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠357° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠12.4°.
Moon is at perigee at 23:46 about 13 days since last apogee on 3 October 2020 at 17:22 in ♈ Aries the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next apogee on 30 October 2020 at 18:46 in ♈ Aries.
This perigee Moon is 356 913 km (221 775 mi) away from Earth. It is 5 595 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 13 443 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
8 days after ascending node on 8 October 2020 at 00:29 in ♊ Gemini the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 4 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 20 October 2020 at 15:53 in ♐ Sagittarius.
6 days since the last northern standstill on 9 October 2020 at 13:07 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.613° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 5 days to face maximum declination of ∠-24.708° at the point of next southern standstill on 22 October 2020 at 02:00 in ♑ Capricorn.
8 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini the Moon is navigating from the beginning to the first 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