At the start of the year, Earth will quietly reach a milestone in its orbit around the sun. Known as perihelion, this is the moment when our planet is closer to the sun than at any other point in the ...

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, ...

Each year, Earth reaches its closest point to the sun in early January, a moment called perihelion. In 2026, this occurred on January 3 at 12:15 p.m. EST, when Earth was about 91.4 million miles from ...

It sounds strange at first because it’s actually the hottest time of the year. One would think it’s actually the opposite. This little marvel is due to the fact that the Earth’s orbit around the sun ...

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 ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Earth is today at aphelion, the point in its orbit at which ...