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 0.9867 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 0.9843 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9867 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0025 AU (368,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 04h50m40s 27°16'N Taurus 32'25"
Sun (centre) 17h29m 23°14'S Ophiuchus 32'29"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 14 Dec 2024

The sky on 14 December 2024
Sunrise
07:03
Sunset
16:11
Twilight ends
17:53
Twilight begins
05:22

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

99%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:36 10:28 15:20
Venus 10:09 14:53 19:37
Moon 15:17 23:25 07:37
Mars 19:14 02:44 10:15
Jupiter 15:32 23:02 06:32
Saturn 11:37 17:08 22:40
All times shown in EST.

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

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

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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42.38°N
71.11°W
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