Tomorrow (May 5) at 5:18 PDT, there will be a new Moon. It means that the Moon is passing the Sun in the sky. It is daytime, so you will not see the Moon, but it is up there about 8 degrees above the sun, as indicated in the first image. Click the thumbnail to see the full image.
What makes this unusual is that only 3 hours later, the Moon is at its closest point in its orbit around the Earth. It will be only 357,771 km away. The combination of the new Moon (the Sun and the Moon in the same direction in the sky), plus the closeness of the Moon, means that we can expect some spectacular tides. Here are the charts for Point Atkinson. The first shows the pattern of tides from May 5 to May 8, and the second is just for May 5.
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