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 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 0.9941 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 0.9920 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9941 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (362,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 00h39m10s 6°34'N Pisces 32'56"
Sun (centre) 14h34m 15°06'S Libra 32'14"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 3 Nov 2025

The sky on 3 November 2025
Sunrise
06:24
Sunset
16:45
Twilight ends
18:19
Twilight begins
04:50

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

96%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:33 13:06 17:39
Venus 05:04 10:37 16:10
Moon 15:31 22:13 05:08
Mars 07:59 12:46 17:34
Jupiter 21:24 04:47 12:10
Saturn 14:56 20:45 02:34
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

29 Oct 2025  –  Moon at First Quarter
05 Nov 2025  –  Full Moon
12 Nov 2025  –  Moon at Last Quarter
20 Nov 2025  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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