© 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 07h59m40s 21°47'N Gemini 9.8"
Sun 07h15m 22°17'N Gemini 31'27"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From Fairfield, Venus will not be observable – it will reach its highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 2° above the horizon at dusk.

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The sky on 9 Jul 2032

The sky on 9 July 2032
Sunrise
05:25
Sunset
20:26
Twilight ends
22:30
Twilight begins
03:21

2-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

5%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:14 14:15 21:16
Venus 06:15 13:40 21:05
Moon 07:29 14:30 21:24
Mars 05:27 12:58 20:30
Jupiter 20:57 01:42 06:28
Saturn 04:08 11:36 19:04
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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

21 Oct 2031  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
07 Jan 2033  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
31 Jan 2033  –  Venus at highest altitude in evening sky
29 May 2033  –  Venus at greatest elongation west

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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