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 15h21m40s 20°57'S Libra 19.7"
Sun 12h29m 3°12'S Virgo 31'57"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Jacksonville, Venus will become visible at around 19:25 (EDT), 19° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 5 minutes after the Sun at 21:15.

The sky on 7 Jul 2024

The sky on 7 July 2024
Sunrise
06:28
Sunset
20:31
Twilight ends
22:07
Twilight begins
04:52


Waxing Crescent

4%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:14 15:05 21:55
Venus 07:10 14:09 21:07
Moon 07:51 15:06 22:14
Mars 02:51 09:35 16:19
Jupiter 03:58 10:53 17:48
Saturn 23:57 05:46 11:34
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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24 Oct 2037  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
24 Nov 2037  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
17 Feb 2038  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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