Venus at perihelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed


Objects: Venus

Venus's 225-day orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.72 AU from the Sun.

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 perihelion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
Venus 05h47m50s 24°50'N Taurus 12.0"
Sun 03h41m 19°37'N Taurus 31'37"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will become visible at around 20:07 (PDT), 22° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 20 minutes after the Sun at 22:10.

The sky on 1 Sep 2025

The sky on 1 September 2025
Sunrise
06:23
Sunset
19:17
Twilight ends
20:44
Twilight begins
04:56


Waxing Gibbous

73%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:30 12:10 18:51
Venus 03:55 10:50 17:44
Moon 15:29 20:07 00:45
Mars 09:20 15:06 20:52
Jupiter 02:17 09:24 16:31
Saturn 20:15 02:11 08:07
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

29 Jul 1993  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
16 Jun 1994  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
24 Aug 1994  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
21 Dec 1994  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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