Sky tonight for this month

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Earth will be at Perihelion on Jan 4th, 2011 (00:30 IST)

Earth will be at Perihelion on Jan 4th, 2011
 
You may know that we don’t have a circular orbit around the Sun. It is elliptical, that means at one point we are closest, and at another we are at the furthest point away. On January 3rd at 19:00 UT or January 4th at 00:30 IST, Earth will be at its closest point from the Sun on its' elliptical orbit around the Earth, which is known as Perihelion.
The Earth-Sun distance at that time is 147,093,590 km, which is about 5 million km closer than its farthest point in early July. However, this effect is much less significant than the effects due to the axial tilt of the Earth. Our seasons are determined primarily by the tilt of the Earth and not by how close or far the Earth is to the Sun.

To read in detail about Earth at Perihelion, find the attached document at the Google Calendar listing for this event here:
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1IXUie0Takfd07MxIuvCzg3l-TgJ7_qcaRN4YKO2sVWY&hl=en

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