Q24N — The Earth will move more slowly this Friday, July 5, than the rest of the year, since it will be at aphelion, or the furthest point in its orbit around the Sun.
According to Alfred Rosenberg, of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), Spain, the Earth goes through aphelion every year, who added in a press release that to complete the orbit of about 940,000,000 kilometers the planet travels at about 30 kilometers per second on average.
The Earth’s orbit around the Sun isn’t a circle, but it’s nearly circular. And it’s not our distance from the sun that creates winter and summer on Earth. Instead, the tilt of our world’s axis with respect to our orbit causes seasons, so sometimes it goes slower, and once a year, on January 3 in the case of 2023, it is at perihelion or minimum distance, of about 147,000,000 kilometers, while today, Friday, July 5, the distance between the planet and the sun will be about 152,000,000 kilometers.
– Advertisement –
Rosenberg explained that Kepler’s second law says that the Earth will travel slower when it is farther from the Sun, and faster when it is closer.
He added that the speeds can be determined at both extreme points of the orbit, so on Friday the Earth will move at just over 29 km/s, 1 km/s less than what it moved on January 3, 2024.
As similes for that distance, he has stated that it would be equivalent to traveling the distance between the Spanish cities of Madrid and Barcelona (or the distance between the islands of La Graciosa and El Hierro, about 500 km in both cases) in 17 seconds.
It would take half a second longer to travel this distance at aphelion than at perihelion, and he commented that a curious effect of this difference in speeds is that summer in the northern hemisphere is about 5 days longer than winter.
With the data it can be deduced that the Earth’s orbit is quite close to a circumference, and in the case of a more extreme planet, such as Mercury, it suffers from a much more notable variation, a aphelion at 70,000,000 kilometers, to a perihelion at 46,000,000 kilometers.
From its surface, the apparent size of the Sun goes from being four times larger than that seen from Earth to being almost ten times larger, and moving around the Sun from almost 40 km/s at aphelion to almost 60 km/s in the perihelion.
– Advertisement –
During aphelion, regions at a latitude between 20 and 25 degrees north will receive the sun’s rays fully (close to the vertical), favoring maximum heating of these areas.
Though not responsible for the seasons, Earth’s closest and farthest points to the sun do affect seasonal lengths. When the Earth comes closest to the sun for the year, as we do every year in early January, our world is moving fastest in orbit. Earth is rushing along now at almost 19 miles per second (30.3 kilometers/sec), moving about 0.6 miles per second (1 kilometer/sec) faster than when Earth is farthest from the sun in early July. So the Northern Hemisphere winter and – simultaneously – the Southern Hemisphere summer are the shortest seasons, as Earth rushes from the solstice in December to the equinox in March.
– Advertisement –
Source link
Q24N
