Earth's orbit is an ellipse, not a perfect circle. Earth's distance from the Sun varies by about 3 million miles throughout the year. Earth's orbit's semimajor axis is approximately 93 million miles.

We worked out how many trips each of the solar system's eight planets has taken around the sun over the past 4.6 billion years. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

Our planet whirls around the sun in an ellipse, rather than a circle. On Thursday the planet reached its farthest point from its star, known as aphelion. By Katrina Miller This article was originally ...

The sun moves in such a predictable way across the sky that you might never suspect that its relationship with Earth is changing all the time. In fact, the average distance between Earth and the sun ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

The object, the latest “quasi-moon” detected by astronomers, could be with us for almost another 60 years. By Robin George Andrews The Earth stands alone in the solar system as a habitable world, as ...

Earth’s orbit around the Sun isn’t a perfect circle—it’s slightly elliptical. Each year, around July 2 or 3, Earth reaches its farthest point from the Sun, known as aphelion. Around January 2 or 3, ...

Temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere might be high, but on July 6, our planet will be at its farthest point from the sun this year. It's an annual occasion called aphelion, a term that comes from ...

A Dec. 28, 2023, Facebook post (direct link, archive link) claims humanity's basic understanding of the solar system is flawed. "They say the sun is 400 times larger than the moon and that it only ...

The Earth stands alone in the solar system as a habitable world, as far as we know. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get visitors, most often in the form of (usually harmless) asteroids. Some even ...

Day after day, without fail, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, following a rhythm as old as time itself. But have you ever wondered why the sun behaves in such a predictable way? The ...

With its long days just itching to be spent by water doing nothing, summer really can be an enchanting season. As Jenny Han wrote in the young adult novel “The Summer I Turned Pretty”: “Everything ...