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 0.9840 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 0.9864 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9840 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 17h54m10s 26°19'S Sagittarius 30'13"
Sun (centre) 16h21m 21°29'S Scorpius 32'25"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 29 Nov 2027

The sky on 29 November 2027
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
16:25
Twilight ends
18:03
Twilight begins
05:15


Waxing Crescent

5%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:22 11:11 16:00
Venus 09:12 13:40 18:08
Moon 08:40 13:00 17:21
Mars 09:00 13:30 18:00
Jupiter 00:46 07:01 13:15
Saturn 14:17 20:40 03:03
All times shown in EST.

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

27 Nov 2027  –  New Moon
06 Dec 2027  –  Moon at First Quarter
13 Dec 2027  –  Full Moon
20 Dec 2027  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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