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One complete orbit takes 365.256 days (1 sidereal year), during which time Earth has traveled 940 million km (584 million mi). [2] Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also called Earth's revolution, is an ellipse with the Earth–Sun barycenter as one focus with a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value ...
In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body.
According to a 2008 paper, Earth's orbit will have initially expanded to at most 1.5 AU (220 million km; 140 million mi) due to the Sun's loss of mass. However, Earth's orbit will then start shrinking due to tidal forces (and, eventually, drag from the lower chromosphere) so that it is engulfed by the Sun during the tip of the red-giant branch ...
The Earth's orbit varies between nearly circular and mildly elliptical (its eccentricity varies). When the orbit is more elongated, there is more variation in the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and in the amount of solar radiation, at different times in the year.
The orbital speed of Earth averages about 29.78 km/s (107,200 km/h; 66,600 mph), which is fast enough to travel a distance equal to Earth's diameter, about 12,742 km (7,918 mi), in seven minutes, and the distance from Earth to the Moon, 384,400 km (238,900 mi), in about 3.5 hours.
Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.5 Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.2 Planet orbiting the Sun in an orbit with e=0.8 The red ray rotates at a constant angular velocity and with the same orbital time period as the planet, =. S: Sun at the primary focus, C: Centre of ellipse, S': The secondary focus.
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This is because the distance between Earth and the Sun is not fixed (it varies between 0.983 289 8912 and 1.016 710 3335 au) and, when Earth is closer to the Sun , the Sun's gravitational field is stronger and Earth is moving faster along its orbital path. As the metre is defined in terms of the second and the speed of light is constant for all ...