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 14 December 2020 at 16:17 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 ∠21° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Cold Moon of December 2020 after 15 days on 30 December 2020 at 03:28.
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 ∠1943" and ∠1950".
At 16:17 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 259 of Meeus index or lunation 1212 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 12 hours and 44 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 equal to the mean synodic month length. It is %hours_to_shortest% and %minutes_to_shortest% longer than the 21st century's shortest and %hours_to_longest% and %minutes_to_longest% shorter than the 21st century's longest synodic months.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠30.1° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠53.8°.
1 day since point of perigee on 12 December 2020 at 20:42 in ♏ Scorpio the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 10 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 24 December 2020 at 16:32 in ♈ Aries.
The Moon is 368 825 km (229 177 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 10 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 405 010 km (251 662 mi).
Moon is in descending node in ♐ Sagittarius at 11:03 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 28 December 2020 at 15:03 in ♊ Gemini.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 3 December 2020 at 01:22 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠24.882° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-24.879° at the point of next southern standstill on 15 December 2020 at 22:23 in ♑ Capricorn.
13 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♊ Gemini 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