© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Venus at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed

Objects: Venus
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The sky at

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 05h32m20s 17°54'N Taurus 44.2"
Sun 07h51m 20°59'N Gemini 31'28"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:49 (PDT) – 2 hours and 5 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 20° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:37.

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The sky on 10 Jun 2026

The sky on 10 June 2026
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:02
Twilight ends
21:47
Twilight begins
03:53

25-day old moon
Waning Crescent

19%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:18 14:33 21:48
Venus 08:21 15:30 22:40
Moon 02:03 08:34 15:15
Mars 03:44 10:33 17:21
Jupiter 08:21 15:25 22:30
Saturn 02:15 08:26 14:36
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

12 Apr 1956  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
01 Sep 1956  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
11 Sep 1956  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
18 Nov 1957  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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South El Monte

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

34.05°N
118.05°W
PDT

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