© 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 08h32m10s 11°34'N Cancer 57.5"
Sun 08h52m 17°33'N Cancer 31'31"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

From South El Monte, Venus will not be readily observable since it will be very close to the Sun, at a separation of only 7° from it.

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The sky on 4 Apr 2026

The sky on 4 April 2026
Sunrise
06:33
Sunset
19:14
Twilight ends
20:40
Twilight begins
05:07

16-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

91%

16 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:30 11:14 16:58
Venus 07:34 14:14 20:53
Moon 21:14 02:27 07:34
Mars 05:50 11:45 17:41
Jupiter 11:57 19:06 02:16
Saturn 06:20 12:23 18:27
All times shown in PDT.

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

23 May 2063  –  Venus at greatest elongation east
12 Oct 2063  –  Venus at highest altitude in morning sky
11 Oct 2063  –  Venus at greatest elongation west
29 Dec 2064  –  Venus at greatest elongation east

Image credit

© NASA/Ricardo Nunes

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South El Monte

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Longitude:
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34.05°N
118.05°W
PDT

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