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 1.0104 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 1.0082 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0104 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0025 AU (380,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 21h02m50s 20°02'S Capricornus 31'23"
Sun (centre) 10h56m 6°46'N Leo 31'43"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 5 Sep 2025

The sky on 5 September 2025
Sunrise
06:21
Sunset
19:18
Twilight ends
20:54
Twilight begins
04:44

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

95%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:42 12:25 19:07
Venus 03:48 10:54 18:01
Moon 18:32 23:33 04:44
Mars 09:23 15:01 20:39
Jupiter 01:46 09:12 16:39
Saturn 20:02 01:56 07:50
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

31 Aug 2025  –  Moon at First Quarter
07 Sep 2025  –  Full Moon
14 Sep 2025  –  Moon at Last Quarter
21 Sep 2025  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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41.14°N
73.26°W
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