© 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 11h08m40s 6°55'N Leo 11.0"
Sun 12h33m 3°38'S Virgo 31'57"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:48 (EST) – 2 hours and 0 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 18° above the eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:31.

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The sky on 2 Oct 2025

The sky on 2 October 2025
Sunrise
06:48
Sunset
18:32
Twilight ends
20:04
Twilight begins
05:16

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

78%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:02 13:32 19:02
Venus 04:49 11:16 17:43
Moon 16:30 21:20 02:20
Mars 09:09 14:23 19:36
Jupiter 00:19 07:43 15:08
Saturn 18:11 00:02 05:53
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

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
11 Dec 2026  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
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