Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

The Moon at perihelion

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 closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.9833 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 0.9859 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9833 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0026 AU (392,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 17h37m20s 28°18'S Ophiuchus 30'26"
Sun (centre) 16h35m 22°00'S Ophiuchus 32'26"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 2 Dec 2024

The sky on 2 December 2024
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
16:11
Twilight ends
17:52
Twilight begins
05:12

1-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

3%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:32 12:06 16:40
Venus 10:13 14:42 19:12
Moon 08:41 12:46 16:49
Mars 20:05 03:32 11:00
Jupiter 16:25 23:56 07:26
Saturn 12:23 17:54 23:25
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

01 Dec 2024  –  New Moon
08 Dec 2024  –  Moon at First Quarter
15 Dec 2024  –  Full Moon
22 Dec 2024  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

Share

Cambridge

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

Color scheme