Coinciding with the winter season in the northern hemisphere, the globe is scheduled to reach tomorrow, Wednesday, January 4, the closest distance to the sun, which is known as “perihelion”, at 07:17 pm Mecca time (04:17 pm GMT).
The distance between the Earth and the Sun changes every year
According to engineer Majed Abu Zahra, head of the Astronomical Society in Jeddah, the distance between us and the sun It changes over the course of a year, because the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is elliptical and not circular, and at the point of perihelion, the Earth is at a distance of 147,105,052 million km, which is a distance of regarding 5 million km closer to the Sun (the distance between the center of the Earth and the center of the Sun), compared to what will be It will be regarding 6 months from now when it reaches aphelion (farthest from the sun) on July 4th at a distance of 152,098,455 km from the sun.
Abu Zahra added, during a post on the astronomical society’s page on the social networking site “Facebook”, that the perihelion in January and the aphelion in July is not a great distance difference between them, but this difference in distance means that the sun’s disk will appear outwardly now, and slightly larger. than its usual shape, in addition to that it will be 7% brighter, and despite that it does not cause the ice to melt in the northern hemisphere, because the four seasons mainly occur due to the inclination of the Earth’s rotation axis and not its proximity or distance from the sun.
The North Pole tilts away from the sun in winter
And the head of the astronomical society explained that during the winter the North Pole tends away from the sun, while it is tilted towards the sun during the summer, and although the Earth’s approach to the sun or following it is not the main reason for the occurrence of seasons, it affects the length of those seasons. When the Earth is close to the sun, it moves faster in its orbit and rushes at a speed of approximately 30.3 kilometers per second, which is faster compared to its speed in early July, and therefore the winter season in the northern hemisphere is the shortest of the four seasons.
And on January 1, 2023, the image of the planet Earth appears, during which it is noted that the northern half is tilted away from the sun, where winter season Now, the southern half is tilted toward the sun as it’s summer now there.
