2024’s Perihelion Day: The Point At Which Earth Is Nearest To The Sun

Perihelion Day, which falls on January 3rd, is a unique day for all people on Earth. In 2024, it is when our planet gets closest to the sun. Today, Earth is around 3 million miles closer to the sun than it was on its furthest point, known as the aphelion. Though it doesn’t necessarily occur on the same day every year, perihelion typically occurs around two weeks after the Northern Hemisphere’s shortest day, the winter solstice.

This occurrence demonstrates that Earth’s orbit around the sun isn’t a complete circle but rather more of an oval, which adds to the planet’s fascinating and dynamic motion throughout space.
Earth’s distance from the sun today is around 91.4 million kilometers. According to research from the University of California, Berkeley, when Earth is closest to the Sun—perihelion—sunlight is about 7% more intense than when it is at its farthest point, aphelion, in its orbit.

The word “perihelion” originates in Greek, where “peri” means surrounding and “helios” denotes the sun, according to Space.com. However, “aphelion” refers to the point in an orbit when a body of space is the farthest away from the sun. Natural bodies’ trajectories in the cosmos often veer off of perfect circles and take on an elliptical form.

While some orbits are more flattened and extremely eccentric, others are just slightly elliptical, looking more like a slightly squished circle with low eccentricity. The various and dynamic character of celestial trajectories in the universe is partly attributed to these differences in orbital geometry.