{"id":1902,"date":"2015-01-04T08:35:01","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T08:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=1902"},"modified":"2015-01-04T08:55:49","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T08:55:49","slug":"our-planet-closest-to-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/our-planet-closest-to-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Our planet closest to the sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"aphelion-perihelion-earth\"<\/a>Once in a year, our earth reaches to its perihelion<\/em> which is the nearest point to the sun and aphelion<\/em> which is the farthest point to the sun. The earth experience this annually event perihelion actually during the month January\u00a0when the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing winter and aphelion during the month of July when\u00a0\u00a0the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, our earth will reach to its nearest point perihelion\u00a0on January 4, 2015 at 6:36\u00a0UTC<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(01:36 a.m. EST)\u00a0before dawn from North American longitudes. Here\u00a0perihelion<\/em>\u00a0is a Greek word where\u00a0peri<\/em>\u00a0means\u00a0near<\/em>, and\u00a0helios<\/em>\u00a0means\u00a0sun<\/em>. During perihelion our earth is\u00a0about 5 million kilometers \u2013 or 3 million miles \u2013 closer to the sun in early January than in early July.<\/span><\/p>\n

The number of people think that change in distance of the earth with the sun is the reason for the change in season of our earth which is not the fact. Instead the fact is that\u00a0the orbit of our earth is so close to being circular,so it\u2019s mostly the tilt of our world\u2019s axis that creates winter and summer. In winter, your part of Earth is tilted away from the sun. In summer, your part of Earth is tilted toward the sun. The day of maximum tilt toward or away from the sun is the December or June solstice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the variation in distance of the earth to the sun is not responsible for the seasons, Earth\u2019s closest and farthest points to the sun do affect seasonal\u00a0lengths<\/em>. When the Earth comes closest to the sun for the year, as around now, our world is moving fastest in orbit around the sun. Earth is rushing along now at 30.3 kilometers per second (almost 19 miles per second) \u2013 moving about a kilometer per second faster than when Earth is farthest from the sun in early July. Thus the Northern Hemisphere winter (Southern Hemisphere summer) is the shortest season as Earth rushes from the solstice in December to the equinox in March.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer season (June solstice to September equinox) lasts nearly 5 days longer than our winter season. And, of course, the corresponding seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are opposite. Southern Hemisphere winter is nearly 5 days longer than Southern Hemisphere summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s all due to the shape of Earth\u2019s orbit. The shape is an ellipse, like a circle someone sat down on and squashed. The elliptical shape of Earth\u2019s orbit causes the variation in the length of the seasons \u2013 and brings us closest to the sun in January.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once in a year, our earth reaches to its perihelion which is the nearest point to the sun and aphelion which is the farthest point to the sun. The earth experience this annually event perihelion actually during the month January\u00a0when the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing winter and aphelion during the month of July when\u00a0\u00a0the Northern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth-300x298.jpg",300,298,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",362,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",65,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",430,428,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",96,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/aphelion-perihelion-earth.jpg",150,149,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Environment<\/a>","tag_info":"Environment","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}