Venus at perihelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed


Objects: Venus

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 09h03m40s 17°58'N Cancer 9.6"
Sun 09h05m 16°39'N Cancer 31'32"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will not be readily observable since it will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 1° from it.

The sky on 6 Aug 2035

The sky on 6 August 2035
Sunrise
05:49
Sunset
20:03
Twilight ends
21:52
Twilight begins
04:00


Waxing Crescent

18%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:21 14:07 20:53
Venus 05:45 12:54 20:04
Moon 09:11 15:36 21:53
Mars 22:11 03:53 09:35
Jupiter 23:56 06:58 14:00
Saturn 05:28 12:39 19:51
All times shown in EDT.

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

01 Jan 2035  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
19 Mar 2036  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
22 Mar 2036  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
08 Aug 2036  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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