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 13h43m40s 14°37'S Virgo 29.8"
Sun 11h02m 6°06'N Leo 31'44"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 19:34 (EDT), 10° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 24 minutes after the Sun at 20:40.

The sky on 30 Sep 2024

The sky on 30 September 2024
Sunrise
06:46
Sunset
18:35
Twilight ends
20:07
Twilight begins
05:14


Waning Crescent

2%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:45 12:42 18:39
Venus 09:28 14:38 19:48
Moon 04:33 11:18 17:52
Mars 23:45 07:16 14:48
Jupiter 22:07 05:35 13:02
Saturn 17:42 23:16 04:49
All times shown in EDT.

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

21 Aug 2002  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
17 Dec 2002  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
11 Jan 2003  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
29 Mar 2004  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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