© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Venus at perihelion

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 closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 0.72 AU from the Sun.

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 perihelion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
Venus 12h16m20s 0°02'S Virgo 13.3"
Sun 14h24m 14°22'S Libra 32'13"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Seattle, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:40 (PDT) – 3 hours and 11 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 26° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 07:31.

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The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:52
Sunset
19:33
Twilight ends
21:20
Twilight begins
05:06

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

82%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:12 14:13 21:14
Venus 06:28 12:10 17:51
Moon 22:29 03:20 08:01
Mars 05:54 11:08 16:22
Jupiter 08:21 15:38 22:55
Saturn 06:15 11:42 17:09
All times shown in PDT.

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

10 Sep 2012  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
31 Oct 2013  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
15 Dec 2013  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
12 Feb 2014  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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47.61°N
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