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 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 passing about ∠11° of ♒ Aquarius tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Snow Moon of February 2023 after 14 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 ∠1972" 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°.
1 day since point of perigee on 21 January 2023 at 20:58 in ♑ Capricorn the lunar orbit is getting widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth. It will keep this direction over the next 12 days until the Moon reaches the point of next apogee on 4 February 2023 at 08:55 in ♌ Leo.
The Moon is 363 541 km (225 894 mi) away from Earth and getting further over the next 12 days until the point apogee when Earth-Moon distance is going to be 406 476 km (252 572 mi).
6 days after descending node on 16 January 2023 at 06:32 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 6 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 28 January 2023 at 16:05 in ♉ Taurus.
2 days 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 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠27.511° at the point of next northern standstill on 2 February 2023 at 08:18 in ♋ Cancer.
20 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