Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

The Moon at perihelion

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 closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 1.0133 AU from the Sun.

This happens at around the time when the Moon's orbit carries it between the Sun and the Earth, at around the same time that it passes new moon.

At the moment of the Moon's perihelion, the Earth will lie at a distance of 1.0156 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0133 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (357,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 04h42m50s 27°14'N Taurus 33'24"
Sun (centre) 05h29m 23°15'N Taurus 31'29"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 14 Jun 2026

The sky on 14 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
19:57
Twilight ends
21:39
Twilight begins
03:55

29-day old moon
Waning Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:26 14:33 21:41
Venus 08:28 15:31 22:34
Moon 04:46 12:25 20:06
Mars 03:36 10:25 17:13
Jupiter 08:08 15:09 22:10
Saturn 01:57 08:08 14:18
All times shown in PDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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 Jun 2026  –  Moon at Last Quarter
14 Jun 2026  –  New Moon
21 Jun 2026  –  Moon at First Quarter
29 Jun 2026  –  Full Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

Share

San Diego

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

32.72°N
117.16°W
PDT

Color scheme