Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

The Moon at perihelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed

Objects: The Moon
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The sky at

The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 1.0123 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 1.0149 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0123 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (400,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 09h55m20s 14°15'N Leo 29'49"
Sun (centre) 08h48m 17°49'N Cancer 31'31"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:58
Sunset
19:29
Twilight ends
21:00
Twilight begins
05:27

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

85%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:14 20:59
Venus 06:24 12:10 17:56
Moon 22:00 03:15 08:23
Mars 05:43 11:09 16:35
Jupiter 08:42 15:39 22:36
Saturn 06:07 11:43 17:19
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

31 Jul 1962  –  New Moon
08 Aug 1962  –  Moon at First Quarter
15 Aug 1962  –  Full Moon
22 Aug 1962  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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Longitude:
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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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