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 16h48m30s 24°10'S Ophiuchus 14.3"
Sun 14h12m 13°18'S Virgo 32'12"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 18:09 (EDT), 12° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 49 minutes after the Sun at 19:41.

The sky on 2 Jul 2024

The sky on 2 July 2024
Sunrise
05:22
Sunset
20:29
Twilight ends
22:36
Twilight begins
03:14


Waning Crescent

10%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:52 14:17 21:43
Venus 05:57 13:29 21:00
Moon 02:09 09:49 17:42
Mars 02:06 09:07 16:08
Jupiter 03:13 10:34 17:56
Saturn 23:50 05:32 11:13
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.

Related news

19 Oct 2039  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
05 Jan 2041  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
29 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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