The breathing lunar orbit

Moon Distance & Supermoon Chart

Watch the Moon sweep closer to Earth at perigee and farther away at apogee, with each full moon placed on the same curve.

Earth–Moon distance through the month

Lower points are closer to Earth. Gold markers show full moons; a red-ringed marker identifies a calculated supermoon.

Closest sampled point · perigee356,720 km2 Aug, 06:00 UTC
Farthest sampled point · apogee406,189 km15 Aug, 12:00 UTC
Full moon this month405,116 km17 Aug, 07:32 UTC
Why the Moon's distance changesEarth sits away from the centre of the Moon's elliptical orbit, so the Moon has a nearest point and a farthest point. Earth Perigee Apogee The ellipse is exaggerated so the change is easy to see.
Read the orbit

Why does the curve rise and fall?

The Moon does not travel around Earth in a perfect circle. Its elliptical orbit brings it to a nearest point called perigee and a farthest point called apogee during each orbit.

NASA gives typical distances of about 363,300 km at perigee and 405,500 km at apogee, while stressing that the exact extremes vary. A full moon near perigee is popularly called a supermoon; it is not a formal astronomical classification.

Here, a full moon is highlighted as “super” when it lies within the closest 10% of that month's calculated distance range—the commonly used 90%-of-perigee convention.

From sketches to laser pulses

The telescopic Moon

Galileo's published observations revealed mountains, pits and an uneven lunar surface, helping to transform the Moon from a perfect celestial disk into another world.

A mirror on the Moon

Apollo 11 placed a laser retroreflector on the surface. Observatories could time returning laser pulses and measure the Earth–Moon separation directly.

Millimetre-scale ranging

Modern lunar laser-ranging archives span more than fifty years and help researchers study the Moon's orbit, rotation and tests of gravity.

Background: NASA: Supermoons, NASA: Galileo's observations, and NASA lunar laser-ranging data. Chart values are ChronoWaves estimates for general exploration, not navigation.