Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

The Moon at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Moon feed

Objects: The Moon
Please wait
Loading 0/4
Click and drag to rotate
Mouse wheel to zoom in/out
Touch with mouse to dismiss
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 1.0188 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 1.0163 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0188 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0025 AU (378,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 18h21m00s 28°19'S Sagittarius 31'31"
Sun (centre) 06h04m 23°25'N Gemini 31'28"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 22 Jun 2024

The sky on 22 June 2024
Sunrise
05:18
Sunset
20:29
Twilight ends
22:38
Twilight begins
03:09

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

99%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:56 13:35 21:14
Venus 05:40 13:15 20:49
Moon 20:45 01:02 05:20
Mars 02:25 09:18 16:10
Jupiter 03:44 11:05 18:25
Saturn 00:29 06:11 11:53
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

21 Jun 2024  –  Full Moon
28 Jun 2024  –  Moon at Last Quarter
05 Jul 2024  –  New Moon
13 Jul 2024  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

Share

Fairfield

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

Color scheme