The distance between the sun and the earth
The sun is located at an average distance from the earth of 150 million kilometers, that is, it is so far away that the solar light takes eight minutes to reach the earth as it travels at a speed of 300.000 kilometers per second, and since the earth has an elliptical orbit, it does not revolve around the sun in a complete circle and with the presence of The sun is far from the center of the orbit, which means that the distance between the earth and the sun changes during the year, and the closest of these distances is 147.1 million km, while the farthest of these distances is 152.1 million km, and the earth is the closest to the sun during the winter season in the northern hemisphere.
The distance between the sun and other planets
The sun is considered the heart of the solar system and all the bodies in the solar system revolve around it at different distances. Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is 47 million km away from the sun’s orbit, while it is believed that the other bodies in the Oort cloud, which is the icy shell of the solar system, are 15 million km away from the sun. 100.000 trillion km, and the earth revolves around the sun 5.3 times, and the distance from the earth to the sun is called an astronomical unit or AU, which is used to measure distances across the solar system, and Jupiter is approximately 30.07 astronomical units away from the sun, while Neptune is 268.770 astronomical units away from the sun. And the sun is far from the nearest star, Proxima Centaur, approximately 63.239 astronomical units, according to NASA, in addition to that the longest distances are measured using light years, which is equivalent to XNUMX astronomical units.
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With the development of technology and advanced spacecraft and radar, it is possible to measure the distance between the sun and the Earth in a direct and easy way, because the application of old methods has become obsolete due to the change in the value of the astronomical unit according to the observer’s position in the solar system, in addition to the dependence of the measurement on the mass of the sun and since the mass of the sun changes when Energy is exported, and the value of the astronomical unit changes as well. For this reason, the International Astronomical Union voted in 2012 AD to change the definition of the astronomical unit, which is estimated at 149.598.428 kilometers, which is based on the speed of light and the constant distance without taking into account the mass of the sun.
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