Venus at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed


Objects: Venus

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 02h48m10s 13°07'N Aries 24.3"
Sun 05h56m 23°26'N Taurus 31'28"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:07 (PDT) – 2 hours and 35 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 27° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:24.

The sky on 9 Sep 2025

The sky on 9 September 2025
Sunrise
06:28
Sunset
19:06
Twilight ends
20:31
Twilight begins
05:03


Waning Gibbous

92%

17 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:13 12:38 19:02
Venus 04:10 10:57 17:45
Moon 19:48 02:05 08:32
Mars 09:13 14:54 20:34
Jupiter 01:52 08:58 16:05
Saturn 19:42 01:37 07:33
All times shown in PDT.

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.

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22 Jun 1953  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
03 Aug 1953  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
22 Jun 1954  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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