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 22h41m00s 9°41'S Aquarius 10.5"
Sun 23h50m 1°03'S Pisces 32'08"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Jacksonville, Venus will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 5° above the horizon at dawn.

The sky on 2 Jul 2024

The sky on 2 July 2024
Sunrise
06:26
Sunset
20:32
Twilight ends
22:08
Twilight begins
04:49


Waning Crescent

10%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:53 14:51 21:48
Venus 07:01 14:02 21:03
Moon 03:12 10:24 17:43
Mars 02:59 09:40 16:22
Jupiter 04:13 11:08 18:03
Saturn 00:17 06:05 11:54
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

19 Oct 2039  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
05 Jan 2041  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
23 Jan 2041  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
26 May 2041  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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