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 1.0173 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 1.0148 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0173 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (401,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 18h09m20s 22°17'S Sagittarius 29'45"
Sun (centre) 04h57m 22°40'N Taurus 31'31"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 19 Mar 2024

The sky on 19 March 2024
Sunrise
07:12
Sunset
19:20
Twilight ends
20:50
Twilight begins
05:42

9-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

75%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:48 14:17 20:45
Venus 06:31 12:04 17:36
Moon 13:55 21:42 05:20
Mars 06:00 11:18 16:35
Jupiter 09:12 16:07 23:02
Saturn 06:39 12:14 17:49
All times shown in EDT.

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

04 Jun 1974  –  Full Moon
12 Jun 1974  –  Moon at Last Quarter
20 Jun 1974  –  New Moon
26 Jun 1974  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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