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 sky at

The Moon's monthly orbit around the Earth will carry it to its furthest point from the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 0.9947 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 0.9924 AU from the Sun, and the Moon will lie at a distance of 0.9947 AU from the Sun.

This distance between the Earth and Moon will be 0.0027 AU (403,000 km).

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

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 13h10m30s 5°54'S Virgo 29'34"
Sun (centre) 23h11m 5°09'S Aquarius 32'14"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 7 Mar 2034

The sky on 7 March 2034
Sunrise
06:07
Sunset
17:40
Twilight ends
19:13
Twilight begins
04:34

17-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

89%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:04 10:10 15:15
Venus 06:49 12:50 18:52
Moon 19:27 01:23 07:13
Mars 08:04 15:02 22:00
Jupiter 06:19 12:03 17:47
Saturn 12:09 19:41 03:14
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

04 Mar 2034  –  Full Moon
13 Mar 2034  –  Moon at Last Quarter
20 Mar 2034  –  New Moon
26 Mar 2034  –  Moon at First Quarter

Image credit

Simulated image courtesy of Tom Ruen.

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42.38°N
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