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 0.9866 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 0.9840 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9866 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 05h00m50s 24°07'N Taurus 29'23"
Sun (centre) 17h43m 23°23'S Sagittarius 32'30"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 18 Dec 2021

The sky on 18 December 2021
Sunrise
07:06
Sunset
16:12
Twilight ends
17:54
Twilight begins
05:24

14-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

99%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:06 12:27 16:48
Venus 09:06 13:47 18:27
Moon 15:41 23:39 07:42
Mars 05:17 10:00 14:42
Jupiter 10:41 15:55 21:08
Saturn 09:53 14:45 19:37
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

10 Dec 2021  –  Moon at First Quarter
18 Dec 2021  –  Full Moon
26 Dec 2021  –  Moon at Last Quarter
02 Jan 2022  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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