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 0.9957 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 0.9933 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9957 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (405,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 00h26m40s 2°31'S Cetus 29'29"
Sun (centre) 14h13m 13°22'S Virgo 32'12"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 28 Oct 2020

The sky on 28 October 2020
Sunrise
07:11
Sunset
17:42
Twilight ends
19:17
Twilight begins
05:36

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

95%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:40 12:02 17:24
Venus 04:11 10:18 16:26
Moon 16:50 22:52 05:03
Mars 16:56 23:17 05:37
Jupiter 13:06 17:41 22:17
Saturn 13:24 18:04 22:44
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

23 Oct 2020  –  Moon at First Quarter
31 Oct 2020  –  Blue Moon
08 Nov 2020  –  Moon at Last Quarter
15 Nov 2020  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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