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 20h45m30s 19°13'S Capricornus 9.8"
Sun 20h37m 18°32'S Capricornus 32'29"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will not be readily observable since it will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 2° from it.

The sky on 12 Oct 2024

The sky on 12 October 2024
Sunrise
06:59
Sunset
18:16
Twilight ends
19:47
Twilight begins
05:27


Waxing Gibbous

79%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:43 13:09 18:34
Venus 09:57 14:48 19:40
Moon 15:56 20:52 01:57
Mars 23:26 06:55 14:24
Jupiter 21:20 04:48 12:16
Saturn 16:53 22:26 03:59
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

05 Aug 1985  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
10 Jun 1986  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
26 Aug 1986  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
21 Dec 1986  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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