The new moon is the closest in nearly 1000 years tonight - Space.com

Tonight's new moon may be invisible, but that doesn't make it any less significant.

It's not often we get excited about a new moon from a skywatching perspective, given that you can't see anything from the vantage point of Earth.

At 3:54 p.m. EST (2054 GMT), the moon will be exactly 221,561 miles (356,568 km) away from our planet, according to Timeanddate.com(opens in new tab), which sifted through data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to determine the distances of every Earth-moon distance for hundreds of years.

Because the moon's orbit is not perfectly circular, but elliptical, its distance from Earth changes all the time.

By comparison, the moon's average distance is 238,855 miles (384,400 km) away.

But this moon is special for another reason; it marks the Lunar New Year, a major festival celebrated across Asia, particularly in China.