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 0.9885 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 0.9859 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9885 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 10h23m20s 6°50'N Leo 29'24"
Sun (centre) 21h15m 15°56'S Capricornus 32'26"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 25 Nov 2024

The sky on 25 November 2024
Sunrise
06:50
Sunset
16:26
Twilight ends
18:04
Twilight begins
05:13

24-day old moon
Waning Crescent

24%

24 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:30 12:58 17:26
Venus 10:15 14:43 19:11
Moon 01:23 07:34 13:35
Mars 20:42 04:05 11:28
Jupiter 17:13 00:40 08:07
Saturn 12:57 18:29 00:01
All times shown in EST.

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

03 Feb 2015  –  Full Moon
11 Feb 2015  –  Moon at Last Quarter
18 Feb 2015  –  New Moon
25 Feb 2015  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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