© 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 12h12m00s 0°24'N Virgo 13.1"
Sun 14h17m 13°46'S Virgo 32'12"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 04:26 (EST) – 2 hours and 52 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 27° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 07:00.

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The sky on 29 Oct 2028

The sky on 29 October 2028
Sunrise
07:18
Sunset
17:51
Twilight ends
19:24
Twilight begins
05:45

11-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

92%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:09 11:47 17:24
Venus 04:24 10:29 16:34
Moon 15:53 22:10 04:36
Mars 01:55 08:40 15:26
Jupiter 05:23 11:11 16:59
Saturn 18:01 00:45 07:29
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 Sep 2028  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
27 Oct 2029  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
03 Dec 2029  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
14 Feb 2030  –  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
EST

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