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 0.9849 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 0.9872 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9849 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (363,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 17h17m20s 26°16'S Ophiuchus 32'52"
Sun (centre) 16h02m 20°41'S Scorpius 32'24"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 25 Nov 2022

The sky on 25 November 2022
Sunrise
06:44
Sunset
16:14
Twilight ends
17:54
Twilight begins
05:05

2-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

4%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:41 12:09 16:37
Venus 07:30 12:05 16:41
Moon 08:54 13:15 17:34
Mars 17:02 00:45 08:29
Jupiter 13:25 19:21 01:17
Saturn 11:51 16:53 21:54
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

23 Nov 2022  –  New Moon
30 Nov 2022  –  Moon at First Quarter
07 Dec 2022  –  Full Moon
16 Dec 2022  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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