Earth's orbit

From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

All planets in our solar system follow an elliptical path. This path is known as an orbit. Earth's orbit is elliptical but so much like a circle that if you were to draw the Earth's orbit on a sheet of paper as a perfect circle, the width of the line would be larger than the elliptical path of the Earth.

The Earth's orbit takes roughly 365 days, this is also called a year. This means that in 365 (a year) the Earth has gone completely around the Sun. From this we can find that the Earth is actually moving at about 67,000 miles per hour through space!

The closest distance Earth is to the sun is 146 million km (91 million miles) and the farthest is 152 million km (94.5 million miles).

The seasonal changes on Earth are because of the 23 degree tilt of its rotation axis and slightly elliptical path around the Sun.