Perihelion – Earth closest to the Sun

You may know that we don’t have a circular orbit around the Sun. Its elliptical, that means at one point we are closest, and at another we are the furthest point away. So just about now, January 2/3 2010, the Earth will be at perihelion, the closest point on its elliptical orbit to the Sun. The Sun’s center will be 147,098,040 kilometers away from the Earth’s center. You can compare that aphelion, our most distant point from the Sun, which in 2010 will occur on July 6 when we’ll be 152,096,448 km from the Sun.

Elliptical Orbit

That change in distance is about 5 million kilometers, and is a small fraction of our distance from the Sun, so it doesn’t change the Earth’s temperature very much: a few degrees Celsius, but that’s about it. This is NOT the cause of our seasons….

The only reason I mention this is that is FREEZING here in Dublin, and it feels sort of ironic that we are as close as we get to the Sun. Yes I know about tilt and how it causes seasons….Its just cold right now! So I am off for a hot whiskey. Let me know if the sun appears a bit bigger, just don’t use a your new telescope to check Oh, and give a thought to just how hot the Sun is. It is heating up a planet 93Million miles away….