The Moon at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed


Objects: The Moon

The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its furthest point from the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 1.0141 AU from the Sun.

This happens at around the time when the Moon's orbit carries it around the far side of the Earth as seen from the Sun, at around the same time that it passes full moon.

At the moment of the Moon's aphelion, the Earth will lie at a distance of 1.0116 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0141 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (405,000 km).

The positions of the Sun and Moon in the sky will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 20h31m00s 22°21'S Capricornus 29'25"
Sun (centre) 10h00m 12°08'N Leo 31'37"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 10 Sep 2025

The sky on 10 September 2025
Sunrise
06:29
Sunset
19:05
Twilight ends
20:30
Twilight begins
05:04


Waning Gibbous

85%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:18 12:41 19:03
Venus 04:11 10:58 17:45
Moon 20:18 02:55 09:42
Mars 09:13 14:52 20:32
Jupiter 01:48 08:55 16:02
Saturn 19:38 01:33 07:29
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 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 Aug 1983  –  Moon at First Quarter
23 Aug 1983  –  Full Moon
31 Aug 1983  –  Moon at Last Quarter
06 Sep 1983  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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