© 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 04h32m40s 17°22'N Taurus 36.8"
Sun 07h20m 22°08'N Gemini 31'27"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:03 (EDT) – 2 hours and 24 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 21° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:07.

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The sky on 10 Jul 2020

The sky on 10 July 2020
Sunrise
05:27
Sunset
20:26
Twilight ends
22:30
Twilight begins
03:23

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

66%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:47 11:59 19:11
Venus 03:02 10:09 17:16
Moon 23:33 05:08 10:50
Mars 00:07 06:09 12:11
Jupiter 20:34 01:16 05:57
Saturn 20:56 01:43 06:30
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

26 Mar 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
13 Aug 2020  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
02 Sep 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
29 Oct 2021  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

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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