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 1.0143 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 1.0168 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0143 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0025 AU (372,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 07h05m50s 18°13'N Gemini 32'02"
Sun (centre) 06h55m 22°48'N Gemini 31'27"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 4 Jul 2016

The sky on 4 July 2016
Sunrise
05:47
Sunset
20:39
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
03:49

29-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:31 13:00 20:29
Venus 06:23 13:46 21:09
Moon 06:05 13:26 20:43
Mars 16:45 21:35 02:25
Jupiter 11:09 17:31 23:54
Saturn 18:00 22:53 03:46
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

04 Jul 2016  –  New Moon
11 Jul 2016  –  Moon at First Quarter
19 Jul 2016  –  Full Moon
26 Jul 2016  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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39.04°N
77.49°W
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