How far is the Sun from the Earth?
Minimum Distance from Sun 146 million km (91 million miles) Maximum Distance from Sun: 152 million km (94.5 million miles) The distance between Earth and Sun is probably the least critical with respect to the average temperatures on Earth. The distance between Earth and Sun is about 92 million miles and the change in distance due to the eccentric orbit of Earth around the Sun is around 3 million miles. The astronomical unit (AU or au or a.u. or sometimes ua) is a unit of length approximately equal to the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The currently accepted value of the AU is 149,597,870,691 ± 30 metres (nearly 150 million kilometres or 93 million miles).
The average distance is about 150 million kilometers, but because the orbit of the Earth is not perfectly circular, but slightly elliptical, the distance varies from the Earth’s closest point of about 147.5 million kilometers in early January, to the farthest point in early July at about 152.6 million kilometers.
The average distance between the Sun and the Earth is about 92,935,700 miles. Astronomers refer to this distance as one astronomical unit—the distance light travels in about eight and a half minutes. Earth’s orbit is actually not perfectly circular; the distance between the Earth and the Sun varies slightly over the course of the year. This does not, however, account for seasons; the angle of the Earth’s axis relative to the sun is responsible for that. For more information, refer to the astronomical constants and basic planetary data pages in the Information Please Almanac.
