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 1.0187 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 1.0161 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0187 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 18h34m50s 26°04'S Sagittarius 29'35"
Sun (centre) 05h51m 23°25'N Taurus 31'28"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 19 Jun 2027

The sky on 19 June 2027
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:23
Twilight ends
22:39
Twilight begins
02:49

15-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

98%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:45 13:07 20:29
Venus 04:12 11:41 19:10
Moon 20:40 00:51 05:04
Mars 11:35 18:01 00:28
Jupiter 09:35 16:34 23:33
Saturn 02:00 08:31 15:02
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

18 Jun 2027  –  Full Moon
27 Jun 2027  –  Moon at Last Quarter
03 Jul 2027  –  New Moon
10 Jul 2027  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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