© 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 02h17m10s 11°00'N Aries 21.2"
Sun 05h21m 23°08'N Taurus 31'30"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Cambridge, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 02:53 (EST) – 2 hours and 11 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 19° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 04:43.

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The sky on 12 Jun 2025

The sky on 12 June 2025
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:21
Twilight ends
22:35
Twilight begins
02:50

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

98%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:04 13:49 21:35
Venus 02:54 09:38 16:23
Moon 21:23 01:27 05:32
Mars 10:22 17:17 00:12
Jupiter 05:44 13:20 20:56
Saturn 01:29 07:26 13:23
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

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
14 Aug 2026  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Cambridge

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Longitude:
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42.38°N
71.11°W
EST

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