Why the date alone isn’t the answer
Every stargazing guide tells you to go out near a new moon, and that’s good advice as far as it goes. But the moon doesn’t only get brighter through the month — it also moves, rising about fifty minutes later each night.
So a 22% crescent that sets at 9:40pm hands you a completely dark sky from ten o’clock onwards. A night closer to the new moon can be worse, if the moon happens to be up when you’re out. What you actually want to know is how many hours of the night have no moon in them, and between which times.
That’s the list this page gives you once it knows where you are. Nothing is stored; the maths runs in your tab.
How to read the nights
- Moon-free hours. How much of the night — sunset to sunrise — the moon spends below your horizon. This is the number that decides what you can see.
- The dark window. The times the dark stretch runs between. Some nights it’s the whole night; some nights it starts at 1am, which is worth knowing before you drive somewhere.
- Moon percentage. How lit the moon is. Useful context, but on its own it misleads — see above.
What a moonless night is worth
The Milky Way is the obvious prize. It needs a genuinely dark sky, and moonlight is the one kind of light pollution you can’t escape by driving — a bright moon ruins a Bortle 1 site as thoroughly as a streetlight ruins a garden. The Milky Way guide covers the other half, which is the time of year.
Meteor showers are the other big one. A shower peaking on a moonless night can be several times better than the same shower under a gibbous moon — check the next shower countdown against this list before you plan anything.
And if you’re travelling for it, the dark sky parks guide covers where to go. A dark park on a moonlit night is a wasted trip; the two things have to line up.
New moon dates, 2026 and 2027
Every new moon in the next two years, in UTC. Your local date can land a day either side depending on the time of the crossing and how far you are from Greenwich — the card at the top of the page handles that for you once it knows where you are.
New moon, full moon, and the rest of the cycle
The moon takes about 29.5 days to go from new to full and back — the synodic month. New moon and full moon sit at opposite ends of it, which is why the darkest and brightest nights of any month are always about a fortnight apart.
If you want the other end of that cycle, the full moon calendar lists every full moon this year with moonrise times and the traditional names, and the supermoon explainer covers why some look bigger than others.
