Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

The Moon at perihelion

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 closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.9877 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 0.9900 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9877 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (403,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 17h03m40s 27°27'S Ophiuchus 29'34"
Sun (centre) 15h06m 17°29'S Libra 32'18"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 11 Nov 2026

The sky on 11 November 2026
Sunrise
06:27
Sunset
16:25
Twilight ends
18:02
Twilight begins
04:50

2-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

8%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:14 10:34 15:54
Venus 04:18 09:41 15:04
Moon 09:10 13:20 17:28
Mars 23:05 06:07 13:09
Jupiter 23:17 06:12 13:07
Saturn 14:48 20:54 03:00
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

09 Nov 2026  –  New Moon
17 Nov 2026  –  Moon at First Quarter
24 Nov 2026  –  Full Moon
01 Dec 2026  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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