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 Fairfield local time.

Date Sun
sets at
Moon
sets at
Altitude of Moon
at sunset
Direction of Moon
at sunset
28 Oct 201917:5518:04west
29 Oct 201917:5418:38south-west
30 Oct 201917:5219:1413°south-west
31 Oct 201917:5119:5617°south-west
01 Nov 201917:5020:4221°south-west
02 Nov 201917:4821:3424°south
03 Nov 201917:4722:2926°south

The exact moment of new moon

At the moment of closest approach, it will pass within 4°37' of the Sun, in the constellation Virgo. The celestial coordinates of the Sun and Moon will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 14h13m50s 8°33'S Virgo 32'50"
Sun (centre) 14h07m 12°53'S Virgo 32'11"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 27 Oct 2019

The sky on 27 October 2019
Sunrise
07:15
Sunset
17:55
Twilight ends
19:28
Twilight begins
05:42

29-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:23 14:02 18:42
Venus 08:58 13:53 18:47
Moon 06:20 12:17 18:04
Mars 05:41 11:26 17:11
Jupiter 11:19 15:55 20:32
Saturn 12:54 17:33 22:12
All times shown in EDT.

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

27 Oct 2019  –  New Moon
04 Nov 2019  –  Moon at First Quarter
12 Nov 2019  –  Full Moon
19 Nov 2019  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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