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 1.0084 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 1.0107 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0084 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 11h55m30s 0°39'S Virgo 30'10"
Sun (centre) 10h16m 10°40'N Leo 31'38"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 25 Aug 2025

The sky on 25 August 2025
Sunrise
05:59
Sunset
19:29
Twilight ends
21:12
Twilight begins
04:16


Waxing Crescent

7%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:34 11:41 18:48
Venus 03:13 10:34 17:56
Moon 08:28 14:31 20:24
Mars 09:22 15:09 20:57
Jupiter 02:07 09:39 17:10
Saturn 20:38 02:33 08:28
All times shown in EDT.

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

23 Aug 2025  –  New Moon
31 Aug 2025  –  Moon at First Quarter
07 Sep 2025  –  Full Moon
14 Sep 2025  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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