The Moon | TheSkyLive (2024)

Altitude: -45.0°Azimuth: 281.0°Direction: West

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and is the fifth-largest satellite in the solar system. It has a diameter of 3,474 kilometers and a mass of 7.34 x 10^22 kilograms, making it about 1/81st the mass of Earth. The Moon's surface is covered in craters, mountains, and plains, with the largest feature being the Imbrium Basin. The Moon has no atmosphere and no magnetic field, which means that it is exposed to the solar wind and cosmic rays. It has a day length of 29.5 Earth days, which is also the length of its orbital period around Earth. The Moon has been used as a celestial body for human exploration and scientific study. The first human landing on the Moon was in 1969 during NASA's Apollo 11 mission, and since then, several missions have been sent to study the Moon's geology, surface features, and potential for future human exploration and colonization.

The Moon tonight is in Waning Gibbous phase and is currently in the constellation of Scorpius,at a distance of 388,850 kilometers from Earth.

The current Right Ascension of The Moon is 17h 01m 52s and the Declination is -27° 57’ 37” (topocentric coordinatescomputed for the selected location: Greenwich, United Kingdom edit_location_alt).The current magnitude of The Moon is -11.62 (JPL).

Today's rise,transit and set times ofThe Moon fromGreenwich, United Kingdom edit_location_alt (all times relative to the local timezone Europe/London):

If you need to access this information frequently for your observations, you can create a simple customized Quick Access page,so that you can easily bookmark it in your browser favorites or add a shortcut to your mobile phones' home screen.

Also check out Where is The Moon?,a page that provides all the information needed to find The Moon in the sky and additional links to sky charts.

The distance of The Moon from Earth is currently 388,850 kilometers,equivalent to 0.002599 Astronomical Units.Light takes1.2971 seconds to travel from The Moon and arrive to us.

The following chart shows the distance of The Moon from Earth as a function of time.In the chart the distance data is measured in Astronomical Units and sampled with an interval of 1 day.

The value of the reported distance might be somewhat inaccurate around the times of closest approach for objects passing extremely close to Earth.

Between 1 January 1600 and 30 December 2499,the closest approach ofThe Moon to Earth happens on Wed Jan 13 2275 at a distance of 0.002382 Astronomical Units, or356,377 kilometers:

NOTE: values for the closest approach are computedwith a sampling interval of 1 day.

The following chart is the predicted light curve(visual magnitude as a function of time) of The Moon,according to the most recent ephemerides data. Magnitude data is sampled with a 2 days interval and there might be inaccuraciesfor objects changing brightness very rapidly during the course of a few days. For comets there could be large discrepanciesbetween the observed and predicted brightness because of their highly dynamic behaviour.

The following table lists the ephemerides of The Moon computed for the past and next 7 days, with a 24 hours interval.Click on each row of the table to locate The Moon in our Online Planetariumat the chosen date.