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 0.9899 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 0.9876 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9899 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0025 AU (366,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 02h11m20s 18°18'N Aries 32'33"
Sun (centre) 15h52m 20°11'S Libra 32'23"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 22 Nov 2026

The sky on 22 November 2026
Sunrise
06:46
Sunset
16:28
Twilight ends
18:05
Twilight begins
05:09

13-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

97%

13 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:05 10:22 15:39
Venus 03:44 09:15 14:46
Moon 14:51 22:07 05:36
Mars 22:58 05:52 12:45
Jupiter 22:49 05:41 12:33
Saturn 14:12 20:17 02:23
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

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