© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Venus at aphelion

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 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 18h13m30s 24°47'S Sagittarius 11.5"
Sun 16h16m 21°17'S Scorpius 32'25"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 16:44 (EST), 10° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 40 minutes after the Sun at 18:05.

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The sky on 28 Nov 2019

The sky on 28 November 2019
Sunrise
06:53
Sunset
16:25
Twilight ends
18:03
Twilight begins
05:15

2-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

7%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:09 10:20 15:32
Venus 09:08 13:37 18:05
Moon 08:57 13:36 18:13
Mars 04:22 09:39 14:56
Jupiter 08:43 13:18 17:53
Saturn 09:59 14:39 19:19
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

06 Jan 2019  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
24 Mar 2020  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
26 Mar 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
13 Aug 2020  –  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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