© 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 08h02m10s 21°40'N Cancer 9.8"
Sun 07h19m 22°10'N Gemini 31'27"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Cambridge, Venus will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 1° above the horizon at dusk.

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The sky on 10 Jul 2024

The sky on 10 July 2024
Sunrise
05:14
Sunset
20:21
Twilight ends
22:31
Twilight begins
03:04

5-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

23%

5 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:16 14:28 21:41
Venus 06:02 13:31 20:59
Moon 09:54 16:35 23:04
Mars 01:39 08:50 16:00
Jupiter 02:35 10:02 17:28
Saturn 23:11 04:52 10:32
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

23 Oct 2023  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
10 Jan 2025  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
02 Feb 2025  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
31 May 2025  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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