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 0.9887 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 0.9908 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9887 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (361,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 16h45m40s 23°28'S Ophiuchus 33'02"
Sun (centre) 14h52m 16°30'S Libra 32'17"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 7 Nov 2029

The sky on 7 November 2029
Sunrise
06:22
Sunset
16:29
Twilight ends
18:05
Twilight begins
04:46

1-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

8%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:50 11:44 16:38
Venus 10:30 14:42 18:53
Moon 08:21 12:56 17:28
Mars 10:21 14:45 19:09
Jupiter 05:51 11:04 16:16
Saturn 16:50 23:53 06:56
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

05 Nov 2029  –  New Moon
12 Nov 2029  –  Moon at First Quarter
20 Nov 2029  –  Full Moon
28 Nov 2029  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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