© 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 09h33m10s 7°10'N Leo 57.0"
Sun 09h10m 16°17'N Cancer 31'32"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be 6° below the horizon at dusk.

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The sky on 8 Aug 2023

The sky on 8 August 2023
Sunrise
05:52
Sunset
20:01
Twilight ends
21:49
Twilight begins
04:03

22-day old moon
Waning Crescent

46%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:17 14:39 21:01
Venus 06:49 13:17 19:45
Moon 23:21 06:35 14:02
Mars 08:38 15:00 21:23
Jupiter 23:37 06:34 13:31
Saturn 20:53 02:16 07:39
All times shown in EDT.

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

04 Jun 2023  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
20 Oct 2023  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
23 Oct 2023  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
10 Jan 2025  –  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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