07/06/2015- Ephemeris – Today we are at our greatest distance from the sun.

Ephemeris for Monday, July 6th.  Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 26 minutes, setting at 9:30.   The Moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 12:23 tomorrow morning and tomorrow the Sun will rise at 6:04.

This is the day the we are the farthest we can get from the Sun for the year.  The point in the Earth’s orbit that it occurs is called aphelion.  Earth is closest to the Sun in January at perihelion.  The actual distance difference between perihelion and aphelion is 3 million miles out of roughly 93 million miles.  So now we’re roughly 94 and a half million miles from the Sun or 152 million kilometers., and will swoop down to 91 and a half million miles(91.4) or 147 kilometers from the Sun in early January.  Because Earth’s northern and southern hemispheres have different ratios and placement of land versus ocean I’m not sure you could correlate seasonal differences of the hemispheres with the Earth’s distance from the Sun.  Anyway the approximate time we reach aphelion will be 3 p.m. EDT (19 hr UT).

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The orbits of the inner planets. (P)erihelion – (A)phelion

The above is a diagram from three years ago, so the planets other than the Earth will be in different positions today.  The date of aphelion and perihelion move around over a greater range of dates than the equinoxes and solstices.  I’m not sure why without researching it, but I suspect that the Moon has something to do with it.