© 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 21h42m40s 15°00'S Capricornus 9.9"
Sun 22h13m 10°58'S Aquarius 32'21"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Ashburn, Venus will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 1° below the horizon at dawn.

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The sky on 19 Feb 2021

The sky on 19 February 2021
Sunrise
06:54
Sunset
17:51
Twilight ends
19:21
Twilight begins
05:24

8-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

57%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:48 11:01 16:13
Venus 06:38 11:51 17:03
Moon 10:57 18:15 01:40
Mars 10:17 17:28 00:39
Jupiter 06:12 11:17 16:23
Saturn 05:50 10:49 15:48
All times shown in EST.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

02 Sep 2020  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
29 Oct 2021  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
06 Dec 2021  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
16 Feb 2022  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

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