© 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 00h23m00s 7°59'N Pisces 42.2"
Sun 22h11m 11°08'S Aquarius 32'21"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will become visible at around 17:48 (EDT), 32° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 3 hours and 16 minutes after the Sun at 20:47.

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The sky on 19 Feb 2025

The sky on 19 February 2025
Sunrise
06:39
Sunset
17:31
Twilight ends
19:03
Twilight begins
05:07

21-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

55%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:08 12:38 18:08
Venus 07:44 14:16 20:47
Moon 23:47 04:44 09:33
Mars 13:21 21:06 04:52
Jupiter 11:06 18:31 01:56
Saturn 07:34 13:16 18:58
All times shown in EST.

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 Feb 2025  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
31 May 2025  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
01 Aug 2025  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
05 Jun 2026  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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41.14°N
73.26°W
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