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 1.0134 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 1.0158 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0134 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (361,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 05h01m50s 17°50'N Taurus 33'02"
Sun (centre) 05h35m 23°18'N Taurus 31'29"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 15 Jun 2034

The sky on 15 June 2034
Sunrise
05:16
Sunset
20:26
Twilight ends
22:34
Twilight begins
03:08


Waning Crescent

0%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:28 12:44 20:00
Venus 08:13 15:37 23:02
Moon 04:52 12:07 19:26
Mars 06:46 14:20 21:54
Jupiter 01:43 07:55 14:08
Saturn 07:19 14:44 22:10
All times shown in EDT.

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

09 Jun 2034  –  Moon at Last Quarter
16 Jun 2034  –  New Moon
23 Jun 2034  –  Moon at First Quarter
01 Jul 2034  –  Full Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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