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 Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its furthest point from the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 0.9886 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 0.9862 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9886 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0026 AU (395,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 02h55m30s 21°13'N Aries 30'11"
Sun (centre) 16h25m 21°40'S Ophiuchus 32'26"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 30 Nov 2028

The sky on 30 November 2028
Sunrise
06:50
Sunset
16:12
Twilight ends
17:52
Twilight begins
05:10

14-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

98%

14 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:28 11:56 16:24
Venus 04:31 09:43 14:54
Moon 15:02 22:42 06:29
Mars 00:06 06:31 12:55
Jupiter 02:41 08:20 13:58
Saturn 14:34 21:17 04:00
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

23 Nov 2028  –  Moon at First Quarter
01 Dec 2028  –  Full Moon
09 Dec 2028  –  Moon at Last Quarter
15 Dec 2028  –  New Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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