When is venus at maximum elongation

By the end of the month when it reaches greatest eastern elongation, Venus will rise higher in the western early evening sky in the Southern Hemisphere while laying low just above the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere. If you have trouble spotting it, there are several smartphone apps that can help. AstroBackyard has a list to get you started. At its greatest eastern elongation, Venus will be 47 degrees east of the Sun from our point of view on Earth.

The planet will appear just 12 degrees above the southwest horizon 45 minutes after sunset. A degree is about the width of a pinkie finger from the standpoint of an observer, while 10 degrees is about the width of a closed fist.

It is often called the morning star or the evening star. These apparitions repeat roughly once every 1. When it lies to the east, it rises and sets a short time after the Sun and is visible in early evening twilight. When it lies to the west of the Sun, it rises and sets a short time before the Sun and is visible shortly before sunrise. However, some times of the year are more favourable for viewing Venus than others. This variability over the course of the year is due to the inclination of the ecliptic to the horizon.

At all times, Venus lies close to a line across the sky called the ecliptic, which is shown in yellow in the planetarium above. This line traces the path that the Sun takes through the zodiacal constellations every year, and shows the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Since all the planets circle the Sun in almost exactly the same plane, it also closely follows the planes of the orbits of the other planets, too.

When Venus is widely separated from the Sun, it is separated from it along the line of the ecliptic. But, at different times of year, the ecliptic meets the horizon at different angles at sunset. This means that Venus appears at different altitudes above the horizon at different times of year, even if its separation from the Sun is the same.

If the ecliptic meets the horizon at a shallow angle, then Venus has to be very widely separated from the Sun to appear much above the horizon. Conversely, if the ecliptic is almost perpendicular to the horizon, Venus may appear much higher in the sky, even if it is actually much closer to the Sun. At sunset, the ecliptic makes its steepest angle to the horizon at the spring equinox — in March in the northern hemisphere, and in September in the southern hemisphere.

In both cases, the elongation measured is less than 90 o. The position of a superior planet at conjunction, opposition and quadrature. To compute the UT hour of greatest elongation go to. Year: Greatest Elongations of Venus Uh, oh. It appears your browser either does not support JavaScript or that JavaScript has been disabled. You'll have to replace your browser with one supporting JavaScript or enable it, if that's the problem before you can use this page.

References Meeus, Jean.