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.

The exact moment of new moon

At the moment of closest approach, it will pass within 3°57' 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 13h24m00s 13°05'S Virgo 29'22"
Sun (centre) 13h30m 9°25'S Virgo 32'05"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 18 Mar 2024

The sky on 18 March 2024
Sunrise
07:37
Sunset
19:43
Twilight ends
21:11
Twilight begins
06:10

8-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

74%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:15 14:39 21:04
Venus 06:54 12:27 18:01
Moon 13:31 21:21 05:05
Mars 06:22 11:42 17:02
Jupiter 09:43 16:34 23:25
Saturn 07:05 12:41 18:18
All times shown in MDT.

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 Oct 2104  –  New Moon
26 Oct 2104  –  Moon at First Quarter
02 Nov 2104  –  Full Moon
09 Nov 2104  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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37.13°N
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