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 Cambridge, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:53 (EDT) – 2 hours and 23 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 20° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:55.
The sky on 18 Apr 2024
| The sky on 18 April 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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82% 10 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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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