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 21h38m30s 15°20'S Capricornus 9.8"
Sun 22h06m 11°37'S Aquarius 32'21"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Cambridge, Venus will not be readily observable since it will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 7° from it.

The sky on 7 Jul 2024

The sky on 7 July 2024
Sunrise
05:12
Sunset
20:23
Twilight ends
22:34
Twilight begins
03:01


Waxing Crescent

3%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:03 14:22 21:42
Venus 05:55 13:27 20:58
Moon 06:30 14:22 22:03
Mars 01:45 08:53 16:01
Jupiter 02:44 10:11 17:37
Saturn 23:23 05:03 10:44
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

31 Aug 2036  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
24 Oct 2037  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
30 Nov 2037  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
11 Feb 2038  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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