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 1.0192 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 1.0166 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0192 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 18h58m10s 27°26'S Sagittarius 30'26"
Sun (centre) 07h18m 22°13'N Gemini 31'28"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 10 Jul 2025

The sky on 10 July 2025
Sunrise
05:14
Sunset
20:22
Twilight ends
22:31
Twilight begins
03:04

15-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

99%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:26 14:28 21:31
Venus 02:32 09:48 17:05
Moon 20:09 00:14 04:23
Mars 09:56 16:27 22:57
Jupiter 04:22 11:58 19:33
Saturn 23:41 05:39 11:37
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

02 Jul 2025  –  Moon at First Quarter
10 Jul 2025  –  Full Moon
17 Jul 2025  –  Moon at Last Quarter
24 Jul 2025  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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