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 1.0091 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 1.0068 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0091 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (404,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 21h25m30s 18°00'S Capricornus 29'30"
Sun (centre) 11h16m 4°41'N Leo 31'46"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 11 Sep 2019

The sky on 11 September 2019
Sunrise
06:26
Sunset
19:09
Twilight ends
20:44
Twilight begins
04:51

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

95%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:01 13:15 19:28
Venus 07:06 13:19 19:31
Moon 18:25 23:29 04:39
Mars 06:12 12:38 19:05
Jupiter 13:49 18:28 23:07
Saturn 15:50 20:29 01:07
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

05 Sep 2019  –  Moon at First Quarter
14 Sep 2019  –  Full Moon
21 Sep 2019  –  Moon at Last Quarter
28 Sep 2019  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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