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 0.9973 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 0.9950 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9973 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (405,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 13h46m20s 14°02'S Virgo 29'26"
Sun (centre) 23h47m 1°20'S Pisces 32'08"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 17 Mar 2025

The sky on 17 March 2025
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
18:57
Twilight ends
20:19
Twilight begins
05:31

17-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

89%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:12 13:32 19:52
Venus 06:43 13:12 19:41
Moon 21:23 02:58 08:26
Mars 13:17 20:30 03:43
Jupiter 10:50 17:54 00:57
Saturn 06:50 12:41 18:31
All times shown in PDT.

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

13 Mar 2025  –  Full Moon
22 Mar 2025  –  Moon at Last Quarter
29 Mar 2025  –  New Moon
04 Apr 2025  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

Share

San Diego

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

Color scheme