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 03h57m10s 16°23'N Taurus 32.4"
Sun 06h57m 22°46'N Gemini 31'27"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:02 (PDT) – 2 hours and 39 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 27° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:23.

The sky on 16 Jun 2026

The sky on 16 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:05
Twilight ends
21:50
Twilight begins
03:52


Waxing Crescent

6%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:28 14:37 21:46
Venus 08:32 15:36 22:40
Moon 07:12 14:43 22:06
Mars 03:34 10:26 17:19
Jupiter 08:03 15:07 22:11
Saturn 01:53 08:04 14:15
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE440 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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21 Aug 2068  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
18 Jul 2069  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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