The Moon at perihelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed


Objects: The Moon

The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 1.0138 AU from the Sun.

This happens at around the time when the Moon's orbit carries it between the Sun and the Earth, at around the same time that it passes new moon.

At the moment of the Moon's perihelion, the Earth will lie at a distance of 1.0164 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0138 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0026 AU (395,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 08h13m20s 15°22'N Cancer 30'13"
Sun (centre) 07h42m 21°21'N Gemini 31'28"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 28 Nov 2025

The sky on 28 November 2025
Sunrise
06:34
Sunset
16:42
Twilight ends
18:11
Twilight begins
05:06


Waxing Gibbous

61%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:15 10:35 15:54
Venus 05:50 11:00 16:10
Moon 12:41 18:29 00:27
Mars 07:30 12:24 17:19
Jupiter 20:02 03:06 10:11
Saturn 13:12 19:03 00:55
All times shown in PST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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 Jul 2015  –  New Moon
23 Jul 2015  –  Moon at First Quarter
31 Jul 2015  –  Blue Moon
06 Aug 2015  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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