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 1.0100 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 1.0125 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0100 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (406,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 02h40m20s 10°20'N Cetus 29'22"
Sun (centre) 04h00m 20°35'N Taurus 31'35"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 27 Apr 2026

The sky on 27 April 2026
Sunrise
06:04
Sunset
19:32
Twilight ends
21:03
Twilight begins
04:33


Waxing Gibbous

89%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:27 11:45 18:03
Venus 07:30 14:36 21:41
Moon 16:07 22:15 04:15
Mars 05:05 11:20 17:35
Jupiter 10:38 17:46 00:55
Saturn 04:57 11:03 17:09
All times shown in PDT.

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.

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17 May 2074  –  Moon at Last Quarter
25 May 2074  –  New Moon
02 Jun 2074  –  Moon at First Quarter
09 Jun 2074  –  Full Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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