Luna Proxima

The Moon on Saturday January 21 will be at its new moment (in line with the Sun) only a minute before it is at perigee (nearest to Earth), and this makes it the nearest Moon of the year.

Here, from Astronomical Calendar 2023, is the graph of the Moon’s distance through the year, showing how perigee coincides with new Moon in January, and full in August.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations.

And our table summarizing those nearest moments.

This is the nearest Moon since 2018 Jan. 1 (356,584 km) and until 2034 Nov. 25 (356,472 km) (distances between the centers of Earth and Moon).

Social media may tell you this is a “Supermoon.” Well, yes, it might look noticeably larger if you could see it just south of the Sun, which you can’t. It may cause higher tides than usual.

What you can see, in the evening sky, is the close conjunction of two bright planets. Venus passes only about a third of a degree south of Saturn on Sunday, Jan. 22, at 23 Universal Time.

They will look like a single bright star, 11° above the horizon at the time and location of our picture. The slender Moon will pass about 3° south of the planets on Jan 23 around 10 UT.

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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image” or “Open image in new tab”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.