Earth will be closest to the Sun today (January 4)

New Delhi : The Planetary Society of India (PSI) has said that the Earth will be at its closest to the Sun on Tuesday (January 4).

PSI Director N Sri Raghunandan Kumar in a release said that Earth revolves around the Sun in an elliptical orbit. Due to which, at one point of time, Earth will get closest to the Sun.

He notified that at 12:09 pm on Tuesday, the Earth will reach at the closest point to the sun i.e. 14,70,99,586 km.

Astronomically this phenomenon is known as “Perihelion”. Whereas on July 4 this year, at 12:41 pm, Earth will be at Aphelion at 1.0167 AU (15,20,96,155 km) from Sun i.e. which is the farthest point from the Sun.

In other words, due to the Perihelio, Earth will be 49,96,569 km closer to the Sun compared to July 4 in its orbit.

PSI director also cleared that there is a belief that the distance from the sun decides the weather on the planet which is not true.

At the beginning of the year, in the month of January it is winter in most of the countries in the Northern Hemisphere when the Earth is at the closest it can get to the Sun at the beginning of the year 2022.

Whereas it’s summer in Southern Hemisphere countries. Also in July when Earth is at the farthest point from the Sun it’s mostly hot in India & neighbourhood compared to what it is in January.

This clearly shows Distance of Earth to the Sun doesn’t decide the season but its tilt during its yearly journey around Sun.

In 2021, the same Perihelion (Closest point) happened on January 2 and the Aphelion (farthest point) was reported on July 6.