JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – While trivia nights aren’t really my thing, I like to think I know a little about a lot. And, throw a weather-related question into the mix, and I’m the one everyone puts the most points on.
Case in point, Wednesday evening at a local bar in Atlantic Beach, the inevitable weather question is asked in the General Knowledge category.
Announcer: What month is the Earth closest to the sun?
Me: (whispering so the next table wouldn’t hear my obviously correct answer): June! It’s the summer solstice, longest day of the year, the start of summer. Boom!
Announcer, moments later: The month that Earth is closest to the sun is ... January!
Me: Stunned. Huh? What chapter did I miss in my meteorology classes? Here’s what I learned on my deep dark hole dive this morning.
Not all celestial bodies are round
While most of our childhood drawings depict the Earth, moon, planets, and the big yellow sun as nice round circles, in reality, they’re not. Earth is an oblate spheroid, which is a sphere that’s somewhat flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator, according to NASA Space Place. The sun, though, is basically a perfect sphere, but also a big ball of hot plasma.
Obits tend to take on an elliptical path: at one point closer to the sun and one point furthest away. This path isn’t necessarily round, either. Picture an elongated circle like the one below.
There’s a word for when a celestial body is closest to the sun: perihelion.
From Space.com, the word perihelion is Greek for around (peri) and sun (helios). Aphelion (apo meaning far), is actually closer to the June answer I provided, since that’s when the Earth is furthest away from the sun.
From Time and Date: “Due to variations in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, the dates when the Earth reaches its perihelion or aphelion are not fixed. In 1246, the December Solstice was on the same day as the Earth reached its perihelion. Since then, the perihelion and aphelion dates have drifted by a day every 58 years. In the short term, the dates can vary up to two days from one year to another.
Mathematicians and astronomers estimate that in 6430, over 4,000 years from now, the perihelion will coincide with the March equinox.
Back to the correct answer: January
Orbital precession and gravity over the decades, and the fact that the celestial bodies and the sun aren’t truly round, have caused the shifting in when the Earth is closest to the sun.
From EarthSky, in 2025, our closest point was on Jan. 4 (9 a.m. EST) when Earth was 91,405,993 miles (147,103,686 km) from the sun.
In early January, the Earth is about 3% closer to the sun, roughly 1.5 million miles (2.5 million km) – than during Earth’s aphelion in early July. That’s in contrast to our average distance of about 93 million miles (150 million km).
Be sure to let me know if this question ever comes up in your trivia nights!