© 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 04h39m20s 17°30'N Taurus 37.7"
Sun 07h24m 22°00'N Gemini 31'27"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:05 (EST) – 2 hours and 23 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 21° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:08.

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The sky on 28 Nov 2024

The sky on 28 November 2024
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
16:25
Twilight ends
18:03
Twilight begins
05:15

27-day old moon
Waning Crescent

3%

27 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:13 12:44 17:15
Venus 10:16 14:47 19:17
Moon 04:25 09:34 14:35
Mars 20:32 03:55 11:18
Jupiter 17:00 00:27 07:53
Saturn 12:46 18:18 23:50
All times shown in EST.

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

05 Jun 2012  –  Transit of Venus
15 Aug 2012  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
03 Sep 2012  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
31 Oct 2013  –  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
EST

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