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 1.0068 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 1.0090 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 1.0068 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0025 AU (367,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 12h20m50s 7°00'S Virgo 32'30"
Sun (centre) 10h44m 7°56'N Leo 31'42"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 2 Sep 2027

The sky on 2 September 2027
Sunrise
06:17
Sunset
19:24
Twilight ends
21:01
Twilight begins
04:39

2-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

8%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:54 14:00 20:06
Venus 06:47 13:15 19:43
Moon 08:39 14:27 20:03
Mars 10:35 15:57 21:18
Jupiter 06:09 12:45 19:22
Saturn 21:21 03:52 10:23
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

31 Aug 2027  –  New Moon
07 Sep 2027  –  Moon at First Quarter
15 Sep 2027  –  Full Moon
23 Sep 2027  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EST

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