The Earth reached its perihelion, its closest point to the sun, on January 4, 2022. The image is from NASA.
The sun is a little closer to Earth.
Earth is at its closest to the sun on Tuesday. This milestone happens near the start of the Gregorian calendar year, which is observed in North America.
The exact moment of perihelion this year was at 1:52 a.m. According to EarthSky, the time is 0652GMT. When it is farthest from the sun, Earth is about 5 million miles away. Earth's average distance from the sun is 92,955,807 miles.
The top views of Earth from space.
The seasons are not caused by perihelion and aphelion, but by the tilt of the planet's axis. The northern hemisphere's winter is five days shorter than it is in the summer when Earth is closer to the sun.
The second law of planetary motion was formulated by astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 17th century.
The planets travel in ellipses, rather than the perfect circles imagined by previous sceptics. The invisible line connecting a planet to the sun swept out an equal amount of area over the same amount of time. Theories of gravity explain why a planet needs to travel faster when it is closest to the sun and slower when it is farthest.
The diagram shows Earth's elliptical path around the sun. The image is from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
Even with the shorter distance to the sun, winter will still feel cold in the northern hemisphere.
There is only a small difference in average solar energy when you take into account the distance between aphelion and perihelion. It doesn't amount to much in terms of weather.
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