© 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 05h07m50s 17°51'N Taurus 41.3"
Sun 07h39m 21°27'N Gemini 31'28"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Ashburn, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:39 (EDT) – 2 hours and 17 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 21° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:37.

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The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:58
Sunset
19:29
Twilight ends
21:00
Twilight begins
05:27

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

85%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:14 20:59
Venus 06:24 12:10 17:56
Moon 22:00 03:15 08:23
Mars 05:43 11:09 16:35
Jupiter 08:42 15:39 22:36
Saturn 06:07 11:43 17:19
All times shown in EDT.

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

04 Apr 1980  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
25 Aug 1980  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
09 Sep 1980  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
10 Nov 1981  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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