© 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 02h48m40s 19°00'N Aries 22.3"
Sun 23h58m 0°11'S Pisces 32'07"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 19:21 (EDT), 40° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 59 minutes after the Sun at 23:03.

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The sky on 19 Mar 2020

The sky on 19 March 2020
Sunrise
06:55
Sunset
19:04
Twilight ends
20:37
Twilight begins
05:23

25-day old moon
Waning Crescent

13%

25 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:56 11:19 16:41
Venus 08:36 15:49 23:02
Moon 04:50 09:39 14:30
Mars 03:59 08:38 13:17
Jupiter 03:57 08:39 13:22
Saturn 04:21 09:09 13:57
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

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
EDT

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