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 01h00m50s 4°28'N Pisces 15.4"
Sun 03h35m 19°17'N Taurus 31'37"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:54 (EDT) – 1 hour and 37 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 13° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:12.

The sky on 16 Aug 2024

The sky on 16 August 2024
Sunrise
06:01
Sunset
19:49
Twilight ends
21:33
Twilight begins
04:17


Waxing Gibbous

88%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:36 13:06 19:35
Venus 07:43 14:13 20:43
Moon 18:09 22:31 02:57
Mars 00:49 08:17 15:46
Jupiter 00:47 08:13 15:40
Saturn 20:50 02:29 08:07
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

25 Mar 2006  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
10 May 2007  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
09 Jun 2007  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
24 Oct 2007  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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