© 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 06h51m30s 24°11'N Gemini 10.6"
Sun 05h20m 23°07'N Taurus 31'30"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Cambridge, Venus will become visible at around 20:41 (EDT), 11° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then sink towards the horizon, setting 1 hour and 34 minutes after the Sun at 21:54.

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The sky on 11 Jun 2029

The sky on 11 June 2029
Sunrise
05:04
Sunset
20:20
Twilight ends
22:34
Twilight begins
02:50

29-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

0%

29 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:00 11:06 18:11
Venus 06:32 14:12 21:53
Moon 04:23 12:17 20:12
Mars 13:27 19:29 01:31
Jupiter 14:43 20:27 02:10
Saturn 03:29 10:31 17:32
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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Cambridge

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42.38°N
71.11°W
EDT

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