Black Moon

by Dominic Ford, Editor
Last updated: 4 Mar 2021
Black Moon

The Full Moon, imaged by Tom Ruen.

In recent years, the term black moon has been coined to describe a month which contains either no full moon, or no new moon, or perhaps even two new moons.

The usefulness of the term is rather limited, since not only is there much disagreement about what it actually means, but by any of these definitions, it is not possible to observe a black moon.

List of possible black moons 1950–2299

Even though the Moon shows the same phase at any given moment to all observers across the Earth, any particular full moon and new moon may occur in different months depending on the timezone of the observer. This may lead to differences between published lists of black moons.

In the lists below all times are calculated in universal time, also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). According to that definition, the following months do not contain any full moons:

The following months do not contain any new moons:

The following months contain two new moons:

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Cambridge

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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