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 sky at

The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.9810 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 0.9835 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9810 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0025 AU (373,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 19h27m50s 24°34'S Sagittarius 31'59"
Sun (centre) 19h38m 21°31'S Sagittarius 32'31"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 12 Jan 2021

The sky on 12 January 2021
Sunrise
07:15
Sunset
16:45
Twilight ends
18:23
Twilight begins
05:37

29-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:13 13:00 17:48
Venus 06:08 10:44 15:20
Moon 06:56 11:32 16:08
Mars 11:30 18:21 01:12
Jupiter 08:02 12:54 17:45
Saturn 07:54 12:43 17:33
All times shown in EST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

06 Jan 2021  –  Moon at Last Quarter
13 Jan 2021  –  New Moon
20 Jan 2021  –  Moon at First Quarter
28 Jan 2021  –  Full Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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73.26°W
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