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 1.0153 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 1.0128 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0153 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0026 AU (385,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 17h19m00s 27°48'S Ophiuchus 30'58"
Sun (centre) 04h07m 20°55'N Taurus 31'34"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 24 May 2024

The sky on 24 May 2024
Sunrise
06:25
Sunset
20:19
Twilight ends
21:53
Twilight begins
04:51

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

95%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:24 11:58 18:32
Venus 06:18 13:09 20:01
Moon 20:52 01:52 06:49
Mars 04:07 10:24 16:40
Jupiter 06:14 13:04 19:54
Saturn 02:47 08:35 14:22
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

23 May 2024  –  Full Moon
30 May 2024  –  Moon at Last Quarter
06 Jun 2024  –  New Moon
14 Jun 2024  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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