aphelion

The notion of aphelion It is used in the field of astronomy. Its about most distant point of the orbit of a certain planet with respect to Sun. This means that when a certain planet is in its aphelion, it is located as far from the Sun as it will be while it orbits.

The opposite of aphelion is perihelion: the point on the orbit that is closest to the Sun. These two points are known as apsidal points. According to physical laws, in the aphelion the planet it moves at its minimum speed, while at perihelion it reaches its maximum translation speed.

In the case of the planet Land, the aphelion occurs at the beginning of the month of July. In this instance, the Earth is located at 152.1 million kilometers away from the Sun. At the beginning of January, on the other hand, the Earth passes through its perihelion, being located 147.09 million kilometers from the solar star.

It is important to bear in mind that the notion of aphelion always refers to the distance of the planet from the Sun. On the other hand, when you want to refer to the most distant point from planet Earth, you speak of apogee. If the consideration is to be made on other stars, the generic term used is apoaster.

Because continental surfaces and oceans are not evenly distributed on our planet, the temperatures warmest in the northern hemisphere occur in aphelion, when the distance from the Earth and the Sun is very wide. This is because there is more continental surface in the northern hemisphere, which is then tilted towards the Sun.

Aphelion, perihelion and the order of the seasons

Year after year, at the beginning of January our planet goes through the perihelion of its orbit, and scientists always record the exact moment when this takes place. Although it would seem logical to assume that at this point in its trajectory the Earth is at the highest temperature, since it is when it is closest to the Sun, this is only true for the southern hemisphere: in the north, January is the warmest month. winter cold.

This leads us to the following conclusion: seasons of the Earth are not linked to the distance it maintains with its star, although throughout its entire journey it varies in five million kilometers, as explained above. What happens is that during perihelion, the north pole is on the opposite side to the Sun, given the rotation of the Earth, and for this reason the days there are shorter and the amount of light that arrives is less, in addition to do it in a particularly tangential way.

In this way, although the planet is at its closest point to the Sun, the northern hemisphere receives less hot than the rest of the year; In the south, on the other hand, the situation is clearly the opposite, since the days last longer, the temperature reaches its highest peaks and the light bathes its extensions directly. It is worth mentioning that from a global point of view, given that in the northern hemisphere there is more land than in the south, and that the earth heats up more easily than water, the total temperature of the Earth is higher during aphelion than in perihelion.

Therefore, knowing the distance at which our planet is from the Sun at a certain moment of its trajectory It is not enough to deduce its temperature, which is a phenomenon with little apparent effects.