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 Washington local time.

Date Sun
sets at
Moon
sets at
Altitude of Moon
at sunset
Direction of Moon
at sunset
18 Dec 201717:1817:16south-west
19 Dec 201717:1818:01south-west
20 Dec 201717:1918:4914°south-west
21 Dec 201717:1919:4122°south-west
22 Dec 201717:2020:3529°south-west
23 Dec 201717:2021:3135°south
24 Dec 201717:2122:2840°south

A thin crescent

The months around the spring equinox – March and April in the northern hemisphere – present the best opportunity to see a very thin crescent Moon immediately after sunset in the days following new moon.

This comes about because the Moon appears higher in the dusk sky sooner after new moon in the spring months as compared to other times of year.

The inclination of the ecliptic to the horizon changes over the course of the year, affecting how high objects appear in the sky.

At all times, the Moon lies close to a line across the sky called the ecliptic, which is shown in yellow in the planetarium above. This line traces the path that the Sun takes through the zodiacal constellations every year, and shows the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Since all the planets circle the Sun in almost exactly the same plane, they too move across the sky following the same line.

When the Moon is widely separated from the Sun, it is separated from it along the line of the ecliptic. But, at different times of year, the ecliptic meets the horizon at different angles at sunset. This means that a certain number of days after new moon, the Moon appears at different altitudes above the horizon at different times of year.

At sunset, the ecliptic makes its steepest angle to the horizon at the spring equinox – in March in the northern hemisphere, and in September in the southern hemisphere. Conversely, it meets the horizon at its shallowest angle at the autumn equinox. And so, very thin crescent moons are most visible in the evening sky in the spring.

The inclination of the ecliptic plane to the horizon at Washington varies between 76° (sunset at the spring equinox) and 29° (sunset at the autumn equinox). On December 17, the ecliptic is inclined at 47° to the western sunset horizon.

The exact moment of new moon

At the moment of closest approach, it will pass within 3°53' of the Sun, in the constellation Sagittarius. The celestial coordinates of the Sun and Moon will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 17h44m10s 19°29'S Sagittarius 29'23"
Sun (centre) 17h43m 23°23'S Sagittarius 32'30"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 17 Dec 2017

The sky on 17 December 2017
Sunrise
07:39
Sunset
17:18
Twilight ends
18:52
Twilight begins
06:06

29-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:45 11:44 16:44
Venus 07:17 12:05 16:54
Moon 06:56 12:07 17:16
Mars 03:35 09:00 14:25
Jupiter 04:20 09:36 14:51
Saturn 07:55 12:45 17:35
All times shown in MST.

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

17 Dec 2017  –  New Moon
26 Dec 2017  –  Moon at First Quarter
01 Jan 2018  –  Full Moon
08 Jan 2018  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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