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 Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its furthest point from the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 1.0045 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 1.0025 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0045 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (360,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 22h28m20s 13°56'S Aquarius 33'08"
Sun (centre) 12h13m 1°25'S Virgo 31'54"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 27 Sep 2023

The sky on 27 September 2023
Sunrise
07:23
Sunset
19:23
Twilight ends
20:50
Twilight begins
05:56

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

96%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:03 12:26 18:48
Venus 04:00 10:38 17:15
Moon 18:44 00:27 06:24
Mars 08:42 14:23 20:03
Jupiter 21:10 03:59 10:48
Saturn 17:59 23:23 04:46
All times shown in MDT.

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

22 Sep 2023  –  Moon at First Quarter
29 Sep 2023  –  Full Moon
06 Oct 2023  –  Moon at Last Quarter
14 Oct 2023  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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