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 23 December 2022 at 10:17 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 first ∠3° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2023 after 14 days on 6 January 2023 at 23:08.
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 ∠1963" and ∠1951".
At 10:17 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 284 of Meeus index or lunation 1237 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 36 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2022. It is 23 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 2 hours and 8 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 1 minute longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠344.3° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠360°.
11 days since point of apogee on 12 December 2022 at 00:30 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is getting narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next day until the Moon reaches the point of next perigee on 24 December 2022 at 08:32 in ♑ Capricorn.
The Moon is 365 125 km (226 878 mi) away from Earth and getting closer over the next day until the point perigee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 358 270 km (222 619 mi).
3 days after descending node on 20 December 2022 at 01:36 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 9 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 1 January 2023 at 15:25 in ♉ Taurus.
At 18:18 the Moon is meeting its standstill point to reach South declination of ∠-27.418°. Over the upcoming 13 days the lunar orbit is going to tilt northward to face maximum declination of ∠27.406° at the point of next northern standstill in ♋ Cancer on 6 January 2023 at 03:08.
17 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus 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