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 0.9890 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 0.9864 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9890 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 02h57m30s 13°49'N Aries 29'29"
Sun (centre) 16h18m 21°23'S Scorpius 32'25"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 28 Nov 2020

The sky on 28 November 2020
Sunrise
07:05
Sunset
16:48
Twilight ends
18:22
Twilight begins
05:30

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

98%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:07 11:08 16:10
Venus 04:44 10:05 15:25
Moon 15:58 23:02 06:16
Mars 14:13 20:36 03:00
Jupiter 10:38 15:27 20:15
Saturn 10:46 15:37 20:28
All times shown in EST.

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

21 Nov 2020  –  Moon at First Quarter
30 Nov 2020  –  Full Moon
07 Dec 2020  –  Moon at Last Quarter
14 Dec 2020  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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Longitude:
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39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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