Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

The Moon at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed

Objects: The Moon
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The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its furthest point from the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 1.0109 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 1.0087 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0109 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (359,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 21h09m00s 17°08'S Capricornus 33'15"
Sun (centre) 10h47m 7°39'N Leo 31'42"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:39
Sunset
19:05
Twilight ends
20:29
Twilight begins
05:15

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

85%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:16 13:52 20:29
Venus 05:59 11:49 17:39
Moon 21:33 02:59 08:18
Mars 05:14 10:48 16:21
Jupiter 08:32 15:17 22:02
Saturn 05:40 11:21 17:02
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.

Related news

28 Aug 1952  –  Moon at First Quarter
03 Sep 1952  –  Full Moon
10 Sep 1952  –  Moon at Last Quarter
19 Sep 1952  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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