© 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 10h07m50s 4°19'N Sextans 55.3"
Sun 09h21m 15°29'N Cancer 31'33"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 3° below the horizon at dusk.

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The sky on 26 Jun 2024

The sky on 26 June 2024
Sunrise
05:19
Sunset
20:29
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
03:10

20-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

67%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:19 13:54 21:29
Venus 05:46 13:20 20:54
Moon 23:35 04:50 10:16
Mars 02:17 09:13 16:09
Jupiter 03:32 10:53 18:13
Saturn 00:14 05:55 11:37
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

11 Jun 1999  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
25 Oct 1999  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
30 Oct 1999  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
17 Jan 2001  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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