How far is the Moon from Earth right now?
Distance over the next 60 days
Distance between the centers of Earth and the Moon. Hover or tap the chart to read any date.
Why the distance changes
The Moon's orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, so its distance from Earth changes through every orbit of about 27.3 days. The closest point in each orbit is called perigee and the farthest is apogee. On average the Moon is about 384,400 km (238,900 miles) away.
The exact perigee and apogee distances change from month to month, because the Sun's gravity keeps stretching and twisting the Moon's orbit. A full moon near perigee looks slightly bigger and brighter than usual, which is what people call a supermoon.
Between 2000 and 2050, the Moon is closest on November 25, 2034, at 356,436 km (221,479 miles), and farthest on March 14, 2002, at 406,695 km (252,708 miles). The Moon is also drifting away from Earth by about 3.8 cm (1.5 inches) a year, a change far too small to notice here.
These distances are measured from the center of Earth to the center of the Moon. From a spot on Earth's surface the Moon can be up to about 6,400 km closer or farther, depending on whether it is overhead or on the horizon.
How this is calculated
Your browser calculates the position of the Moon for the current moment from your device's clock, using the Astronomy Engine library, which is based on the VSOP87 planetary theory and a lunar theory derived from ELP. We checked its Earth distances against NASA JPL data (via Astropy) for dates from 1950 to 2045: they agree to better than 0.02%. Distances are measured center to center.