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 sky at

The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its furthest point from the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 1.0164 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 1.0138 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0164 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (402,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 17h56m40s 20°18'S Sagittarius 29'38"
Sun (centre) 04h31m 21°53'N Taurus 31'33"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 31 May 2018

The sky on 31 May 2018
Sunrise
05:08
Sunset
20:13
Twilight ends
22:22
Twilight begins
03:00

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

95%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:49 12:13 19:36
Venus 07:27 15:09 22:52
Moon 21:09 02:00 06:51
Mars 00:03 04:41 09:19
Jupiter 17:53 22:59 04:04
Saturn 22:06 02:41 07:17
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

29 May 2018  –  Full Moon
06 Jun 2018  –  Moon at Last Quarter
13 Jun 2018  –  New Moon
20 Jun 2018  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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