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 0.9892 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 0.9870 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9892 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (358,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 10h47m50s 3°59'N Sextans 33'21"
Sun (centre) 21h38m 14°03'S Capricornus 32'24"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 11 Feb 2028

The sky on 11 February 2028
Sunrise
06:44
Sunset
17:09
Twilight ends
18:44
Twilight begins
05:09


Waning Gibbous

94%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:41 10:42 15:43
Venus 08:26 14:36 20:45
Moon 17:30 00:26 07:07
Mars 07:13 12:30 17:47
Jupiter 19:53 02:07 08:21
Saturn 09:18 15:46 22:14
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

10 Feb 2028  –  Full Moon
17 Feb 2028  –  Moon at Last Quarter
25 Feb 2028  –  New Moon
04 Mar 2028  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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