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 16 August 2023 at 09:38 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 ∠24° of ♌ Leo tropical zodiac sector.
Next Full Moon is the Sturgeon Moon of August 2023 after 14 days on 31 August 2023 at 01:35.
There is extremely high New Moon ocean tide on this date. Combined Sun and Moon gravitational tidal force working on Earth is heavy, because of the Sun-Moon-Earth syzygy alignment and the near perigee.
Lunar disc is not visible from Earth. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1768" and ∠1895".
At 09:38 on this date the Moon completes the old and enters a new synodic month with lunation 292 of Meeus index or lunation 1245 from Brown series.
The length of the lunation is 29 days, 16 hours and 2 minutes. It is 13 minutes shorter 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 3 hours and 18 minutes longer than the mean synodic month length. It is 3 hours and 45 minutes shorter compared to 21st century's longest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit is ∠179.2° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠202.9°.
Moon is at apogee at 11:55 about 14 days since last perigee on 2 August 2023 at 05:52 in ♒ Aquarius the lunar orbit is going to narrow while the Moon is moving towards the Earth over the upcoming 14 days until point of next perigee on 30 August 2023 at 15:51 in ♒ Aquarius.
This apogee Moon is 406 635 km (252 671 mi) away from Earth. This is the year's farthest apogee of 2023. It is 1 227 km further than the mean apogee distance, but it is still 74 km closer than the farthest apogee of 21st century.
9 days after ascending node on 7 August 2023 at 02:46 in ♈ Aries the Moon is positioned north of the ecliptic over the following 5 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from North to South in descending node on 21 August 2023 at 16:23 in ♎ Libra.
4 days since the last northern standstill on 12 August 2023 at 07:39 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.981° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next 10 days to face maximum declination of ∠-28.095° at the point of next southern standstill on 26 August 2023 at 20:22 in ♐ Sagittarius.
9 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♈ Aries 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