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 16h26m30s 23°36'S Ophiuchus 15.4"
Sun 13h43m 10°45'S Virgo 32'07"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will become visible at around 18:21 (PDT), 16° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 1 minute after the Sun at 20:07.

The sky on 23 Jun 2026

The sky on 23 June 2026
Sunrise
05:38
Sunset
20:06
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:53


Waxing Gibbous

69%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:27 14:29 21:31
Venus 08:44 15:42 22:39
Moon 14:52 20:20 01:41
Mars 03:23 10:19 17:16
Jupiter 07:42 14:45 21:48
Saturn 01:27 07:38 13:49
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.

Related news

04 Oct 2103  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
18 Dec 2104  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
14 Jan 2105  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
08 May 2105  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Share