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 0.9847 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 0.9869 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9847 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (358,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 17h29m00s 21°46'S Ophiuchus 33'21"
Sun (centre) 16h07m 20°56'S Scorpius 32'24"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 26 Nov 2030

The sky on 26 November 2030
Sunrise
06:45
Sunset
16:13
Twilight ends
17:53
Twilight begins
05:05

1-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

5%

1 day old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:43 13:02 17:21
Venus 07:35 12:09 16:43
Moon 08:19 12:58 17:40
Mars 01:30 07:34 13:39
Jupiter 07:01 11:43 16:25
Saturn 16:16 23:34 06:51
All times shown in EST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

25 Nov 2030  –  New Moon
01 Dec 2030  –  Moon at First Quarter
09 Dec 2030  –  Full Moon
17 Dec 2030  –  Moon at Last Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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