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 21 January 2023 at 20:53 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 leaving the last ∠4° of ♑ Capricorn tropical zodiac sector and will enter ♒ Aquarius later.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2023 after 15 days on 5 February 2023 at 18:29.
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 ∠1973" and ∠1950".
At 20:53 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 285 of Meeus index or lunation 1238 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 13 minutes. This is the year's shortest synodic month of 2023. It is 4 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 2 hours and 31 minutes shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 38 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠360° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠15.6°.
Moon is at perigee at 20:58 about 13 days since last apogee on 8 January 2023 at 09:19 in ♌ Leo the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 13 days until point of next apogee on 4 February 2023 at 08:55 in ♌ Leo.
This perigee Moon is 356 570 km (221 562 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's closest perigee of 2023. It is 5 938 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 145 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
5 days after descending node on 16 January 2023 at 06:32 in ♏ Scorpio 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 28 January 2023 at 16:05 in ♉ Taurus.
1 day since the last southern standstill on 20 January 2023 at 05:06 in ♑ Capricorn when the Moon has reached South declination of ∠-27.461° the lunar orbit is extending northward over the next 11 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.511° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 February 2023 at 08:18 in ♋ Cancer.
19 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