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 00h51m20s 3°33'N Pisces 14.8"
Sun 03h20m 18°24'N Aries 31'39"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:03 (EDT) – 1 hour and 30 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 12° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:15.

The sky on 4 May 2025

The sky on 4 May 2025
Sunrise
05:44
Sunset
19:52
Twilight ends
21:41
Twilight begins
03:56


Waxing Gibbous

54%

7 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:59 11:21 17:43
Venus 04:01 10:08 16:16
Moon 12:09 19:30 02:39
Mars 11:20 18:40 01:59
Jupiter 07:55 15:25 22:55
Saturn 04:03 09:57 15:51
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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15 Mar 2038  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
05 May 2039  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
30 May 2039  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
17 Oct 2039  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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