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 23h47m40s 2°55'S Pisces 12.1"
Sun 01h38m 10°15'N Pisces 31'52"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 05:06 (PDT) – 1 hour and 11 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 10° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:02.

The sky on 16 Apr 2027

The sky on 16 April 2027
Sunrise
06:17
Sunset
19:23
Twilight ends
20:51
Twilight begins
04:49


Waxing Gibbous

87%

10 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:53 12:06 18:18
Venus 05:05 10:59 16:53
Moon 15:20 21:51 04:12
Mars 14:02 20:52 03:42
Jupiter 13:39 20:29 03:19
Saturn 06:07 12:24 18:41
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

03 Jan 2027  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
21 Mar 2028  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
23 Mar 2028  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
10 Aug 2028  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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