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 | 00h30m00s | 8°35'N | Pisces | 41.1" |
| Sun | 22h15m | 10°48'S | Aquarius | 32'20" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
From Cambridge, Venus will become visible at around 17:40 (EST), 32° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 22 minutes after the Sun at 20:45.
The sky on 20 Feb 2017
| The sky on 20 February 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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29% 23 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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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.
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| 03 Feb 2017 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
| 03 Jun 2017 | – Venus at greatest elongation west |
| 02 Aug 2017 | – Venus at highest altitude in morning sky |
| 06 Jun 2018 | – Venus at highest altitude in evening sky |
Image credit
© NASA/Ricardo Nunes