New Moon

Thursday 15th Feb 201820:31

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed

The Moon will pass close to the Sun and become lost in the Sun’s 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. Click here for more information about the Moon’s phases.

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.

Over coming days, the Moon will rise and set an hour later each day, becoming 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 day-by-day progress is charted below, with all times are given below in London local time.

Date Sun
sets at
Moon
sets at
Altitude of Moon
at sunset
Direction of Moon
at sunset
15 Feb 2018 17:08 16:42 -8° west
16 Feb 2018 17:10 17:48 west
17 Feb 2018 17:12 18:54 south-west
18 Feb 2018 17:14 20:01 17° south-west
19 Feb 2018 17:16 21:12 26° south-west
20 Feb 2018 17:18 22:22 35° south-west
21 Feb 2018 17:19 23:33 43° south-west

At the moment of closest approach, it will pass within 1°06’of the Sun, in the constellation Capricornus. The exact positions of the Sun and Moon will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 21h57m50s -13°35′ Capricornus 29’58”
Sun (centre) 21h56m -12°32′ Capricornus 32’22”

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 15 February 2018
Sunrise 07:13
Sunset 17:13
Twilight ends
19:05
Twilight begins
05:21

29-day old moon
Age of Moon
29 days

All times shown in GMT.
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:25 12:10 16:54
Venus 07:42 12:49 17:57
Moon 07:13 11:57 16:42
Mars 02:56 07:00 11:05
Jupiter 01:07 05:40 10:12
Saturn 04:45 08:45 12:44

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 DE405 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

15 Feb 2018, 21:07 GMT   –  New Moon
23 Feb 2018, 08:10 GMT   –  Moon at First Quarter
02 Mar 2018, 00:53 GMT   –  Full Moon
09 Mar 2018, 11:21 GMT   –  Moon at Last Quarter