Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

New Moon

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed

Objects: The Moon
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The sky at

The Moon will pass close to the Sun and become lost in the its glare for a few days.

The Moon's orbital motion carries it around the Earth once every four weeks, and as a result its phases cycle from new moon, through first quarter, full moon and last quarter, back to new moon once every 29.5 days.

This motion also means that the Moon travels more than 12° across the sky from one night to the next, causing it to rise and set nearly an hour later each day. More information about the Moon's phases is available here.

At new moon, the Earth, Moon and Sun all lie in a roughly straight line, with the Moon in the middle, appearing in front of the Sun's glare. In this configuration, we see almost exactly the opposite half of the Moon to that which is illuminated by the Sun, making it doubly unobservable because the side we see is unilluminated.

Observing the Moon in the days after new moon

Over coming days, the Moon will become visible in the late afternoon and dusk sky as a waxing crescent which sets soon after the Sun. By first quarter, in a week's time, it will be visible until around midnight.

Its daily progress is charted below, with all times are given in Cambridge local time.

Date Sun
sets at
Moon
sets at
Altitude of Moon
at sunset
Direction of Moon
at sunset
18 Nov 201716:1916:47south-west
19 Nov 201716:1817:2410°south-west
20 Nov 201716:1818:0515°south-west
21 Nov 201716:1718:5020°south-west
22 Nov 201716:1619:3924°south
23 Nov 201716:1620:3227°south
24 Nov 201716:1521:2930°south

The exact moment of new moon

At the moment of closest approach, it will pass within 4°57' of the Sun, in the constellation Libra. The celestial coordinates of the Sun and Moon will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 15h39m50s 14°27'S Libra 29'42"
Sun (centre) 15h35m 19°16'S Libra 32'21"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 18 Nov 2017

The sky on 18 November 2017
Sunrise
06:37
Sunset
16:19
Twilight ends
17:57
Twilight begins
04:58

30-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

0%

30 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:35 12:56 17:17
Venus 05:32 10:39 15:46
Moon 06:32 11:42 16:47
Mars 03:13 08:56 14:39
Jupiter 05:04 10:17 15:31
Saturn 09:00 13:35 18:10
All times shown in EST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

18 Nov 2017  –  New Moon
26 Nov 2017  –  Moon at First Quarter
03 Dec 2017  –  Full Moon
10 Dec 2017  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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