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 15h34m10s 21°34'S Libra 18.7"
Sun 12h43m 4°37'S Virgo 31'59"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will become visible at around 18:48 (PST), 17° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 0 minutes after the Sun at 20:32.

The sky on 14 Feb 2026

The sky on 14 February 2026
Sunrise
06:35
Sunset
17:34
Twilight ends
18:58
Twilight begins
05:11


Waning Crescent

3%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:24 13:08 18:52
Venus 07:10 12:42 18:15
Moon 05:07 09:56 14:49
Mars 06:16 11:32 16:49
Jupiter 14:10 21:19 04:28
Saturn 08:17 14:14 20:11
All times shown in PST.

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

01 Sep 2004  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
03 Nov 2005  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
08 Dec 2005  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
24 Feb 2006  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Share