The northern hemisphere remains in the grip of winter, while countries such as the United Kingdom are under icy and icy conditions. So some may be surprised to hear that our planet is the closest point to the sun all year long today – a phenomenon known as perihelion.
Perihelion is the exact period when the Earth’s orbit approaches the nearest point of the star of our solar system.
The word ‘perihelion’ is derived from the Greek words ‘peri’ – meaning ‘near’ and ‘helios’ – meaning ‘sun’.
At 15 January GMT on Saturday, 2 January, our world is located exactly 147,393,162 million km from the sun.
This is about three percent closer than average, which results in the earth receiving significantly more radiation than heat from the sun.
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As a result, the sun will also be almost imperceptibly greater in our day sky.
The US space agency NASA said in a statement: ‘The average distance from the earth to the sun is called an astronomical unit [AU], but because our orbit is not a perfect circle, it sometimes means that we are a little closer to the sun and sometimes further away.
‘Our distance from the sun varies over the course of the year by about three million kilometers.
‘It’s almost 13 times the distance from the earth to the moon.
It is known that the earth rotates on an axis entitled 23.44 degrees – a lean that is responsible for allocating how much sunlight each hemisphere receives from the earth at different times of the year.
This is both in terms of the duration of days and how low or high the sun hangs in the sky.
This inclination is the most important factor responsible for the seasons and the solstice.
Although perihelion means that the earth receives more radiation from the sun, the earth is slightly at its coolest during this period.
This is because most of the southern hemisphere is oceans that absorb the extra heat and negate the impact of the perihelion.