© 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 00h56m00s 4°01'N Pisces 15.1"
Sun 03h28m 18°51'N Taurus 31'38"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Ashburn, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:16 (EDT) – 1 hour and 38 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 14° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 05:36.

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 15 May 2022

The sky on 15 May 2022
Sunrise
05:54
Sunset
20:15
Twilight ends
22:04
Twilight begins
04:06

15-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

99%

15 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:24 13:41 20:59
Venus 04:17 10:33 16:49
Moon 18:40 00:10 05:32
Mars 03:24 09:12 15:01
Jupiter 03:40 09:40 15:41
Saturn 02:11 07:26 12:41
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

20 Mar 2022  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
08 May 2023  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
04 Jun 2023  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
20 Oct 2023  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

Share

Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

Color scheme