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 13h52m40s 15°17'S Virgo 28.7"
Sun 11h09m 5°24'N Leo 31'45"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will become visible at around 19:25 (PDT), 16° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 44 minutes after the Sun at 20:54.

The sky on 26 Aug 2025

The sky on 26 August 2025
Sunrise
06:19
Sunset
19:25
Twilight ends
20:53
Twilight begins
04:50


Waxing Crescent

16%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:03 11:51 18:40
Venus 03:44 10:43 17:43
Moon 09:40 15:25 21:03
Mars 09:25 15:15 21:06
Jupiter 02:35 09:43 16:50
Saturn 20:39 02:36 08:33
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.

Related news

26 Aug 1986  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
23 Dec 1986  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
15 Jan 1987  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
02 Apr 1988  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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