The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.9807 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 0.9834 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9807 AU from the Sun.
This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (399,000 km).
The positions of the Sun and Moon in the sky will be:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 18h37m30s | 18°57'S | Sagittarius | 29'54" |
| Sun (centre) | 18h34m | 23°12'S | Sagittarius | 32'31" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 29 Dec 2016
| The sky on 29 December 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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0% 30 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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
| 29 Dec 2016 | – New Moon |
| 05 Jan 2017 | – Moon at First Quarter |
| 12 Jan 2017 | – Full Moon |
| 19 Jan 2017 | – Moon at Last Quarter |
Image credit
Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.