© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Venus at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed

Objects: Venus
Please wait
Loading 0/4
Click and drag to rotate
Mouse wheel to zoom in/out
Touch with mouse to dismiss
The sky at

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 13h33m50s 13°51'S Virgo 31.0"
Sun 10h55m 6°49'N Leo 31'43"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Ashburn, Venus will become visible at around 19:51 (EDT), 11° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 27 minutes after the Sun at 21:01.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

The sky on 5 Sep 2018

The sky on 5 September 2018
Sunrise
06:39
Sunset
19:34
Twilight ends
21:07
Twilight begins
05:06

25-day old moon
Waning Crescent

19%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:30 12:17 19:04
Venus 10:28 15:44 21:01
Moon 01:43 09:14 16:44
Mars 17:46 22:18 02:50
Jupiter 12:03 17:11 22:20
Saturn 15:35 20:19 01:03
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

17 Aug 2018  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
13 Dec 2018  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
06 Jan 2019  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
24 Mar 2020  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Share

Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

Color scheme