The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.9945 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 0.9968 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9945 AU from the Sun.
This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0026 AU (388,000 km).
The positions of the Sun and Moon in the sky will be:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 15h18m30s | 20°52'S | Libra | 30'43" |
| Sun (centre) | 13h26m | 9°03'S | Virgo | 32'05" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 17 Oct 2023
| The sky on 17 October 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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9% 3 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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
| 14 Oct 2023 | – New Moon |
| 21 Oct 2023 | – Moon at First Quarter |
| 28 Oct 2023 | – Full Moon |
| 05 Nov 2023 | – Moon at Last Quarter |
Image credit
Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.