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 Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 1.0025 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 1.0047 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0025 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 00h00m10s 5°28'S Pisces 29'23"
Sun (centre) 01h52m 11°33'N Aries 31'50"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 19 Apr 2020

The sky on 19 April 2020
Sunrise
06:11
Sunset
19:21
Twilight ends
20:49
Twilight begins
04:44

26-day old moon
Waning Crescent

5%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:39 11:51 18:03
Venus 08:17 15:36 22:55
Moon 04:49 10:37 16:32
Mars 02:47 08:01 13:16
Jupiter 01:42 06:48 11:53
Saturn 02:01 07:10 12:19
All times shown in PDT.

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

14 Apr 2020  –  Moon at Last Quarter
22 Apr 2020  –  New Moon
30 Apr 2020  –  Moon at First Quarter
07 May 2020  –  Full Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

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