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 17h55m40s 24°52'S Sagittarius 12.0"
Sun 15h48m 19°59'S Libra 32'22"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will become visible at around 16:58 (PDT), 14° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 48 minutes after the Sun at 18:29.

The sky on 28 Apr 2026

The sky on 28 April 2026
Sunrise
06:03
Sunset
19:33
Twilight ends
21:05
Twilight begins
04:32


Waxing Gibbous

94%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:27 11:48 18:08
Venus 07:31 14:37 21:43
Moon 17:06 22:57 04:41
Mars 05:03 11:19 17:35
Jupiter 10:35 17:43 00:51
Saturn 04:53 11:00 17:06
All times shown in PDT.

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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07 Mar 2076  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
11 Mar 2076  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
27 Jul 2076  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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