Our Moon reaches perigee, (closest distance to Earth), for this orbit on Saturday September 8th. At that time the Moon will be at a distance of 28.325 Earth diameters (361,355 km or 224,535 miles) from the Earth.
Saturday morning September 8th the very thin 28-day old waning crescent Moon will be about 1.5o from the star Regulus and about 2-3o from the innermost planet Mercury.
*Click here to read my 2006 Scope on the Sky column “The Real Shape of the Moon’s Orbit”. (PDF)
Read this very informative article about the Earth-Moon system and their orbital motions, written by Joe Hanson. “Do We Orbit the Moon?”
Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for monthly observing information, or here to go to bobs-spaces.
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The Moon reaches perigee, (minimum distance from Earth), this month on Monday March 26th. At that time the Moon will more or less be at a distance of 28.90 Earth diameters (369,106 km or 229352 miles) from the Earth.
Thursday January 4th the waning gibbous Moon will be crossing the plane of the ecliptic moving north relative to the ecliptic. This is known as the ascending node, one of two intersections the Moon’s orbital path has with the ecliptic. The ecliptic is actually the Earth’s orbit and the Moon’s orbit is inclined about 6o from the ecliptic. So there are two node intersections, the 
Does our Moon actually go around the Earth as many graphics show? From our perspective on the Earth the Moon appears to circle around the Earth. However, in reality, the Moon orbits the Sun together with the Earth*