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The aphelion distance between the Earth's and Sun's centers is currently about 1.016 71 AU or 152,097,700 km (94,509,100 mi). The dates of perihelion and aphelion change over time due to precession and other orbital factors, which follow cyclical patterns known as Milankovitch cycles.
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 ...
The changing Earth-Sun distance results in an increase of about 7% in total solar energy reaching the Earth at perihelion relative to aphelion. [10] Since the southern hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun at about the same time that the Earth reaches the closest approach to the Sun, the southern hemisphere receives slightly more energy from the ...
At perihelion, Earth is roughly 91.4 million miles away from the sun. On average, the planet is separated from the sun by a distance of approximately 93 million miles.
One astronomical unit (about 150 million kilometres; 93 million miles) is defined as the mean distance between the centers of the Sun and the Earth. The instantaneous distance varies by about ± 2.5 million kilometres (1.6 million miles) as Earth moves from perihelion around 3 January to aphelion around 4 July. [36]
One particularly distant body is 90377 Sedna, which was discovered in November 2003.It has an extremely eccentric orbit that takes it to an aphelion of 937 AU. [2] It takes over 10,000 years to orbit, and during the next 50 years it will slowly move closer to the Sun as it comes to perihelion at a distance of 76 AU from the Sun. [3] Sedna is the largest known sednoid, a class of objects that ...
Extra-close oppositions of Mars happen every 15 to 17 years, when we pass between Mars and the Sun around the time of its perihelion (closest point to the Sun in orbit). The minimum distance between Earth and Mars has been declining over the years, and in 2003 the minimum distance was 55.76 million km, nearer than any such encounter in almost ...
This is because the solar constant is evaluated at a fixed distance of 1 Astronomical Unit (au) while the solar irradiance will be affected by the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. Its distance to the Sun varies annually between 147.1·10 6 km at perihelion and 152.1·10 6 km at aphelion.