© 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 23h54m10s 2°14'S Pisces 12.3"
Sun 01h49m 11°14'N Aries 31'50"

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 no higher than 7° above the horizon at dawn.

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The sky on 1 Oct 2024

The sky on 1 October 2024
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
18:34
Twilight ends
20:05
Twilight begins
05:15

28-day old moon
Waning Crescent

0%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:51 12:45 18:39
Venus 09:30 14:39 19:47
Moon 05:34 11:57 18:10
Mars 23:43 07:15 14:46
Jupiter 22:03 05:31 12:59
Saturn 17:38 23:12 04:45
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

11 Jan 2003  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
29 Mar 2004  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
28 Mar 2004  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
08 Jun 2004  –  Transit of Venus

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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