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 1.0070 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 0.0024 AU (359,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 16h21m20s 21°10'S Scorpius 33'13"
Sun (centre) 02h25m 14°25'N Aries 31'45"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 28 Apr 2021

The sky on 28 April 2021
Sunrise
06:13
Sunset
19:59
Twilight ends
21:40
Twilight begins
04:33

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

90%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:41 13:47 20:54
Venus 06:41 13:40 20:39
Moon 20:52 02:10 07:20
Mars 09:22 16:54 00:26
Jupiter 03:23 08:43 14:03
Saturn 02:40 07:44 12:48
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

26 Apr 2021  –  Full Moon
03 May 2021  –  Moon at Last Quarter
11 May 2021  –  New Moon
19 May 2021  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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39.04°N
77.49°W
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