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Happy Aphelion Day! The Earth is farther away from the sun today (July 6) than at any other time of the year.
The exact moment of the aphelion arrives at 12:46. EDT (16:46 GMT), when the Earth will be 94,507,803 miles (152,095,566 kilometers) from the sun. It's more than 1.5 million miles (2.5 million km) further than the planet's average distance of about 150 million km – and twice as far as perihelion, or the shortest distance from the sun, January 3
When the Earth turns around the sun, it does not travel in a perfect circle. On the contrary, its orbit is elliptical, or oval, with the sun located about 2.5 million miles (2.5 million km) off-center. [25 Weirdest Facts About the Solar System]
This diagram (not drawn to scale) shows all the major points of the Earth's orbit around from the sun in 2018. Each solstice and equinox mark the beginning of a new season. The earth is farthest from the sun at aphelion and closest to the sun at perihelion. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Our planet reaches aphelion only once a year. the June solstice, which marks the first day of summer for the northern hemisphere and the first day of winter for the southern hemisphere. Similarly, perihelion occurs two weeks after the December solstice.
In the cosmic scheme of things, these annual changes in the distance of the Earth from the sun are tiny. The distance from the Earth to the aphelion and perihelion differs from the average distance between the Earth and the Sun by less than 2%. Aphelion and parhelion are not seasonally related, and people on Earth will not notice any difference in weather or climate because the Earth is further away from the sun, NASA officials said. "Seasonal weather conditions are primarily influenced by the 23.5 degree tilt of the axis of rotation of our planet, and not by the slight eccentricity of the Earth's orbit," said George Lebo , an astronomer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. A declaration.
"During the Nordic summer, the North Pole is tilted towards the sun, the days are long, and the sun is shining more down – that is what makes the month of July so hot" , says Lebo
. This necessarily means that the Earth's distance from the sun has no noticeable effects, said Roy Spencer, of the World Center for Hydrology and Climate Huntsville, Alabama , in the same press release. "On average on the globe, sunlight falling on Earth in July (aphelion) is indeed about 7% less intense than in January (perihelion)," Spencer said.
Strangely, this does not mean that the Earth is colder when it is further away from the sun. "The average temperature of the Earth at aphelion is about 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 degrees Celsius) higher than at perihelion," Spencer said.
This may seem counterintuitive, but the reason is the distribution of land and water on our planet. "The average temperature of the Earth over the entire globe is slightly higher in July, as the sun shines on all of these" northern hemisphere "lands, which are warming up quite easily," Spencer said.
. [email protected] or follow it @hannekescience . Follow us on @Spacedotcom Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com
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