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 23h43m30s 3°21'S Aquarius 11.9"
Sun 01h31m 9°35'N Pisces 31'53"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 05:06 (PST) – 1 hour and 12 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 10° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:02.

The sky on 25 Dec 2025

The sky on 25 December 2025
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
16:48
Twilight ends
18:18
Twilight begins
05:23


Waxing Crescent

35%

6 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:49 10:46 15:43
Venus 06:44 11:38 16:32
Moon 10:43 16:27 22:18
Mars 07:14 12:07 17:00
Jupiter 18:03 01:09 08:16
Saturn 11:27 17:19 23:12
All times shown in PST.

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

29 Dec 2042  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
16 Mar 2044  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
19 Mar 2044  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
06 Aug 2044  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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