© 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 02h27m00s 11°43'N Aries 22.1"
Sun 05h33m 23°17'N Taurus 31'29"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:03 (EDT) – 2 hours and 15 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 20° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:58.

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The sky on 29 Sep 2024

The sky on 29 September 2024
Sunrise
06:45
Sunset
18:37
Twilight ends
20:09
Twilight begins
05:13

26-day old moon
Waning Crescent

6%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:40 12:40 18:40
Venus 09:25 14:37 19:49
Moon 03:31 10:38 17:33
Mars 23:46 07:18 14:49
Jupiter 22:10 05:38 13:06
Saturn 17:46 23:20 04:54
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

07 Jun 2001  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
04 Aug 2001  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
08 Jun 2002  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
21 Aug 2002  –  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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