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 Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.9864 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 0.9887 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9864 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0024 AU (365,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 20h43m50s 13°20'S Aquarius 32'40"
Sun (centre) 22h11m 11°11'S Aquarius 32'21"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 19 Feb 2031

The sky on 19 February 2031
Sunrise
06:31
Sunset
17:39
Twilight ends
19:03
Twilight begins
05:07

27-day old moon
Waning Crescent

1%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:39 12:05 17:31
Venus 07:54 13:54 19:54
Moon 04:55 10:18 15:48
Mars 23:21 04:45 10:08
Jupiter 02:33 07:30 12:27
Saturn 10:58 17:54 00:50
All times shown in PST.

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

14 Feb 2031  –  Moon at Last Quarter
21 Feb 2031  –  New Moon
28 Feb 2031  –  Moon at First Quarter
08 Mar 2031  –  Full Moon

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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