© 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 16h54m40s 24°19'S Ophiuchus 14.1"
Sun 14h20m 13°58'S Virgo 32'12"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 18:07 (EDT), 12° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 50 minutes after the Sun at 19:40.

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The sky on 30 Oct 2024

The sky on 30 October 2024
Sunrise
07:19
Sunset
17:50
Twilight ends
19:23
Twilight begins
05:46

28-day old moon
Waning Crescent

1%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:58 13:44 18:30
Venus 10:38 15:09 19:39
Moon 05:32 11:15 16:48
Mars 22:52 06:17 13:43
Jupiter 20:06 03:34 11:02
Saturn 15:40 21:12 02:44
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

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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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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