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 00h53m40s 3°46'N Pisces 15.0"
Sun 03h24m 18°38'N Taurus 31'39"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:01 (EST) – 1 hour and 32 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 13° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:14.

The sky on 14 May 2030

The sky on 14 May 2030
Sunrise
05:33
Sunset
20:02
Twilight ends
21:56
Twilight begins
03:39


Waxing Gibbous

92%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:44 11:17 17:49
Venus 04:01 10:17 16:33
Moon 17:02 22:30 03:49
Mars 05:43 12:58 20:13
Jupiter 19:44 00:45 05:46
Saturn 05:56 13:05 20:13
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.

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07 May 2031  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
02 Jun 2031  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
19 Oct 2031  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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