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 0.9992 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 0.9971 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9992 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0026 AU (385,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 14h21m10s 19°25'S Virgo 30'58"
Sun (centre) 00h14m 1°34'N Pisces 32'04"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 25 Mar 2027

The sky on 25 March 2027
Sunrise
06:37
Sunset
19:01
Twilight ends
20:36
Twilight begins
05:02

17-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

87%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:50 11:15 16:40
Venus 05:21 10:37 15:54
Moon 22:05 02:57 07:41
Mars 14:57 22:08 05:20
Jupiter 14:44 21:50 04:57
Saturn 07:15 13:33 19:51
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

22 Mar 2027  –  Full Moon
29 Mar 2027  –  Moon at Last Quarter
06 Apr 2027  –  New Moon
13 Apr 2027  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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