© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Venus at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed

Objects: Venus
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The sky at

Venus's 225-day orbit around the Sun will carry it to its furthest point to the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 0.73 AU.

In practice, however, Venus's orbit is very close to circular; its distance from the Sun varies by only about 1.5% between perihelion and aphelion. This makes Venus's orbit more perfectly circular than that of any of the Solar System's other planets. As a result, its surface receives almost exactly the same amount of energy from the Sun at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) and aphelion (furthest recess from the Sun).

The position of Venus at the moment it passes aphelion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
Venus 15h28m00s 21°16'S Libra 19.2"
Sun 12h36m 3°54'S Virgo 31'57"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 18:48 (EDT), 12° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 43 minutes after the Sun at 20:14.

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The sky on 3 Oct 2021

The sky on 3 October 2021
Sunrise
06:49
Sunset
18:31
Twilight ends
20:03
Twilight begins
05:17

26-day old moon
Waning Crescent

9%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:00 13:21 18:41
Venus 10:49 15:32 20:15
Moon 03:14 10:29 17:33
Mars 06:58 12:47 18:36
Jupiter 16:33 21:41 02:50
Saturn 15:46 20:38 01:29
All times shown in EDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

02 Sep 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
29 Oct 2021  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
06 Dec 2021  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
16 Feb 2022  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
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