Phase 1 of 8 Next: Saturday 10 October 2026

The New Moon

Nothing at all. The lit face is turned away from us and the Moon sits in the same part of the sky as the Sun.

Where to look: Rises at about sunrise and sets at about sunset — above you all day, lost in the glare the whole time.

The new moon is the only phase nobody has ever seen, and the only one you can be certain about without looking: it is not a faint moon, it is the far side being sunlit instead of ours. Twice a year or so the alignment is exact enough that the Moon crosses the Sun's face and the invisible phase becomes the most dramatic thing in the sky.

Commonly muddled: A thin crescent low in the west after sunset is not a new moon. That is a day or two later, and the distinction is the whole basis of several calendars.

#005Phases & orbitThere is no dark side of the Moon. There's a far side, and at new moon it's the one in full daylight.Every part of the Moon gets two weeks of sunlight and two weeks of night. At new moon the near side faces us in…NASA Moon overview

#012Phases & orbitThe Moon passes between us and the Sun every month, and almost never causes an eclipse.Its orbit is tilted about 5° from Earth's orbital plane, so at most new moons the shadow misses above or below…NASA eclipse resources

#033ObservingOn a thin crescent you can often see the whole disc faintly glowing. That's Earth, lighting the Moon's night.When we see a slim crescent, an astronaut on the Moon would see a nearly full Earth, four times wider than our Moon…NASA Moon observing

#045Earth & tidesThe biggest tides of the month arrive at new and full moon, when the Sun and Moon pull in line.The Sun raises tides too, about 46% as strong as the Moon's. When all three bodies line up the effects add, giving…NOAA tides and currents

#078ObservingMajor observatories schedule their whole year around the Moon. The nights near new moon are called dark time, and astronomers fight over them.Telescope committees split the calendar into bright, grey and dark time by lunar phase. Faint galaxies and distant…Observatory time-allocation practice (ESO…

#082ObservingCrescent-spotting is a competitive sport. The youngest moon ever caught by naked eye was under sixteen hours old.As the crescent thins, mountains along the limb break it into beads and then swallow it entirely, the Danjon limit…Danjon (1932); observer records, Sky &…

#085Phases & orbitA new moon is up all day. It rises with the Sun, crosses the sky beside it, and sets with it, invisible the entire way.New moon is not the Moon being away; it is the Moon in the daytime sky, lost in glare a few degrees from the Sun…U.S. Naval Observatory

#088Phases & orbitNo two lunations are the same length. They run from 29.27 days to 29.83, thirteen hours between the extremes.29.53 days is an average, not a timetable. The orbit is an ellipse and the Earth-Moon pair is itself swinging…Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, ch. 49

#091Strange but trueBali switches off — no lights, no traffic, no flights in or out — for twenty-four hours every year, on a day that always falls at new moon.Nyepi, the Balinese day of silence, runs 6am to 6am. Everyone stays indoors, artificial light is restricted…Balinese saka calendar; annual Ngurah Rai…

#093Earth & tidesA purely lunar year is about eleven days short of a solar one, so Ramadan drifts backwards through the calendar and works its way round every season in about thirty-three years.Twelve lunations come to roughly 354.37 days against the solar year's 365.24. The Islamic calendar keeps the Moon…Umm al-Qura calendar; 12 × 29.530588 days…

#102Phases & orbitSunrise to sunrise at a spot on the Moon takes 29.5 Earth days, so any base there has to sit through about 354 hours of continuous night.Because the Moon turns once per orbit, the Sun crawls across its sky at half a degree an hour. Fourteen days of…NASA Moon facts

#150ObservingIn the last seconds before a total solar eclipse the sunlight breaks into a row of separate points, because it is shining through valleys on the Moon's limb.The beads are named after Francis Baily, who described them in 1836. When only one is left the effect is the…Baily, Memoirs of the RAS 10 (1836); NASA…

#180Strange but trueFrom the Moon, Earth is about four times wider than the Moon looks from here and roughly forty times brighter, and it goes through phases opposite to ours.When we have a new moon, they have a full Earth, which is why the dark part of a young crescent glows: it is lit by…NASA Moon facts

The New Moon

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The New Moon

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