© 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 13h27m40s 6°55'S Virgo 17.7"
Sun 16h18m 21°23'S Scorpius 32'25"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:09 (EST) – 3 hours and 45 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 33° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:35.

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The sky on 25 Nov 2024

The sky on 25 November 2024
Sunrise
06:50
Sunset
16:26
Twilight ends
18:04
Twilight begins
05:13

24-day old moon
Waning Crescent

24%

24 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:30 12:58 17:26
Venus 10:15 14:43 19:11
Moon 01:23 07:34 13:35
Mars 20:42 04:05 11:28
Jupiter 17:13 00:40 08:07
Saturn 12:57 18:29 00:01
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

26 Oct 2015  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
12 Jan 2017  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
03 Feb 2017  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
03 Jun 2017  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

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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