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 | 08h06m10s | 21°28'N | Cancer | 9.8" |
| Sun | 07h26m | 21°56'N | Gemini | 31'27" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
From Cambridge, Venus will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 1° above the horizon at dusk.
The sky on 16 Aug 2024
| The sky on 16 August 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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88% 12 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Warning
Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.
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
| 28 Oct 2007 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
| 14 Jan 2009 | – Venus at greatest elongation east |
| 05 Feb 2009 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 05 Jun 2009 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
Image credit
© NASA/Ricardo Nunes