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The new moon occurs on Nov. 1, at 8:47 a.m. Eastern Time (1247 GMT). Three days later the moon will make a close pass to Mercury in the evening sky.
A new moon happens when the moon is between the sun and Earth; technically it is at the same celestial longitude as the sun. Celestial longitude is a projection of the Earth's longitude lines on the sky; when two bodies share the same longitude that is called a conjunction. The hour of lunar phases depends on one's time zone because the phase changes according to the moon's place in its orbit rather than an observer's location on Earth.
New moons are called such because in many lunar calendar systems, such as the Islamic or Hebrew calendars, months were reckoned with the new moon at the beginning. In Islamic calendars the month begins when the first, thin crescent moon, called a hillal, can be seen in the evening. The Hebrew calendar used a similar system until sometime in between the 8th and 10th century CE when Jewish scholars adopted a mathematically-based method for determining when the months began.
New moons are invisible unless they pass directly in front of the sun, making a partial or total solar eclipse. New moons don't create eclipses every month because the moon's orbit is slightly inclined compared to Earth's, so the three bodies aren't always perfectly lined up.
The last perfect, eclipse-creating alignment was on Oct. 2 during an annular solar eclipse, and the eclipse was visible in the southern Pacific Ocean and South America. The next one will be a partial solar eclipse on March 29, 2026.
Visible planets
On the night of Nov. 1, the sun sets in New York at 5:51 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. The sky gets markedly darker by about 6:20 p.m., when the sun gets to six degrees below the horizon; this is the start of nautical twilight, and it is often when streetlights come on (this can vary depending on your local town or city's policy).
At that point one can see Venus in the southwest, about 12 degrees above the horizon – one way to see a planet's altitude is to use a hand: hold a closed fist at arm's length and the width of the fist is about 10 degrees. If one does this with Venus one will see it about two finger-widths above the fist. Venus is the third-brightest object in the sky and will likely be the first "star" visible to the eye in the evening. Venus sets in New York at 7:47 p.m.
On Nov. 4 the moon, now three days old, will pass near Venus; sunset that day is at 4:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (Daylight Savings ends on Nov. 3). By about 5:15 p.m. one should see the thin crescent moon almost directly below Venus in the sky; the pair sets at 6:49 p.m. according to In-the-Sky.org.
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