© 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 04h21m30s 23°21'N Taurus 15.3"
Sun 01h42m 10°39'N Pisces 31'51"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 19:53 (EDT), 32° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 25 minutes after the Sun at 23:00.

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The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:40
Sunset
19:13
Twilight ends
20:47
Twilight begins
05:06

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

84%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:08 13:57 20:46
Venus 06:08 11:53 17:38
Moon 21:47 02:58 08:00
Mars 05:29 10:52 16:16
Jupiter 08:21 15:22 22:23
Saturn 05:52 11:26 17:00
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

23 Mar 2014  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
09 May 2015  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
06 Jun 2015  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
22 Oct 2015  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

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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