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 00h02m40s 1°21'S Pisces 12.6"
Sun 02h03m 12°30'N Aries 31'48"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:51 (PDT) – 1 hour and 21 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 12° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:56.

The sky on 26 Sep 2025

The sky on 26 September 2025
Sunrise
06:40
Sunset
18:42
Twilight ends
20:06
Twilight begins
05:17


Waxing Crescent

26%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:32 13:20 19:09
Venus 04:42 11:11 17:40
Moon 11:23 16:16 21:04
Mars 09:01 14:30 19:58
Jupiter 00:57 08:02 15:08
Saturn 18:32 00:26 06:20
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.

Related news

20 Jan 1971  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
06 Apr 1972  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
07 Apr 1972  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
27 Aug 1972  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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