Is the sun getting closer to the earth?
352366
no, but the sun is getting bigger and it is predicted that it will absord mercury and venus on its way to us, but it may or may not consume us.  This will only occur in the next 5 billion or so years.  But you can look at this question two ways, yes it is getting closer because it is expanding, or you could say no because it is not physically moving toward us even though we are going in an eliptical orbit (oval for you simpletons)\n\nConsidering also that we are significantly smaller than the sun, and the laws of physics state that (in simple terms) the larger the object is = stronger the force of gravity.  Thus meaning that the sun cannot actually get closer to us, but we could if we did not maintain the correct amount of centripetal force that allows us to rotate in an eliptical orbit so that we do not fall into the sun.  \n\nPS i am in 10th grade
18956
yes it will be.But since u are a bit closer to the equator it will be close to the horizon.Sighting things close to the horizon can be a little difficult
861683
The Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical.  When it is closest to the Sun it is a distance of 91.4 million miles.  At it's furthest it is 94.5m miles.  The distance between the Earth and the Sun is also known as 1AU (astronomical unit).
909859
We have the ability now to measure the orbit of the Earth, and all other planets, to very high precision, and it is not getting closer to the Sun.\n\nYou can do a very rough measurement yourself. If the Earth gets closer to the Sun, the Sun will appear bigger in the sky. Measure it in photographs taken by the same telescope a year apart. \n\nAnother consideration is this. Currently, the Moon and Sun appear the same size in the sky, which produces spectacular total eclipses of the Sun. If the Earth got just a little closer to the Sun, the Moon would no longer be able to completely cover the Sun. So if total solar eclipses continue as usual, that is evidence the Earth is not getting any nearer to the Sun.
526984
NO, angle of the earth on it's axis limits sunlight for a few months. The days never warm up.
160404
Because the sun is going down or coming up
804289
The average distance to the sun is 92900000 miles, though it is changing. First I should say that the Earth's orbit around the Sun is elliptical, not perfectly circular, so the Earth-Sun distance is changing as we speak just from the Earth traveling in its orbit around the Sun.\n\nIs the orbit itself changing? Well, there are some long-period oscillations, but those are very small, and don't imply that we're systematically moving towards or away from the Sun.\n\nThere is an effect which is making us move very slowly away from the Sun. That is the tidal interaction between the Sun and the Earth. This slows down the rotation of the Sun, and pushes the Earth farther away from the Sun. The principle for the Sun-Earth system should be the same. But how big of an effect is this? It turns out that the yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and the Sun from this effect is only about one micrometer (a millionth of a meter, or a ten thousandth of a centimeter). So this is a *very* tiny effect.\n\nThere is another effect which is also small, but somewhat bigger than the tidal effect. The Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, which means the Sun is continuously transforming a small part of its mass into energy. As the mass of the Sun goes down, our orbit gets proportionally bigger. However, over the entire main sequence lifetime of the Sun (about 10 billion years), the Sun will only lose about 0.1% of its mass, which means that the Earth should move out by just ~150,000 km (small compared to the total Earth-Sun distance of ~150,000,000 km). If we assume that the Sun's rate of nuclear fusion today is the same as the average rate over those 10 billion years (a bold assumption, but it should give us a rough idea of the answer), then we're moving away from the Sun at the rate of ~1.5 cm (less than an inch) a year. I probably don't even need to mention that this is so small that we don't have to worry about freezing.
740599
Afraid you got it backwards, Lee -- in winter Earth is closest to the sun, in summer we're farthest away. The seasons of Earth are not caused by our distance from the sun but instead by the 23-degree tilt of Earth on its axis.
614161
I found these charts\nhttp://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=198\nhttp://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=136\n\nAs you can see the sunrise off by exactly one half hour on May 5.  Then it slowly diverges, b/c it differs by 1 min each day in philly and often 2 mins in London.  I am sure this is due to latitude.\n\nIt looks like the times are slowly converging the closer we get to the solstice.
931063
Of course the Moon is closer than the Sun.\n\nThe average distance from the earth to the sun, the semimajor axis of its orbit, is 149,597,890 km.\n\nMoon's orbit is elliptical: its average orbital radius is 384401 km, apogee (farthest distance from the Earth) is 406700 km, and perigee (distance of closest approach to the Earth) is 356400 km.
26830
The Earth is closest to the Sun on about 4 January of each year... Winter in the Northern Hemisphere\n\nMistWing SilverTail
1169828
The Sun will be closest to the whole planet in January, since that's when Earth reaches perihelion.  However, in January the Northern hemisphere will be tilted away from the Sun.  In July we'll be at aphelion (farthest point from the Sun), but the Northern hemisphere will be tilted towards the Sun and we'll have the longer days (and therefore, summer).
1041670
The distance to the sun can be computed by a variety of techniques.  Trigonometry and parallax measurements were used by ancient greek and arab astronomers to come up with pretty good estimates for the distances to the sun, moon, and other planets.\n\nThe sun's diameter at its equator is about 865,000 miles, and the mean distance from the earth to the sun is about 93 million miles.\n\nThe moon's diameter at its equator is about 2,160 miles, and the mean distance from the earth to the moon is about 238,900 miles.\n\nThe ratio of the diameters is 865000 / 2160 or about 400.  The ratio of distances is 93,000,000 / 238,900 or about 390.  So the sun is about 400 times larger than the moon, but it's also about 400 times farther away - so the sun and moon appear about the same size in the sky.\n\nThe moon's orbit around the earth isn't a circle, and the lunar distance varies from about 220,000 miles to about 252,000 miles.  When it is close to the earth, the moon appears slightly larger than the sun.  When it is in the further part of it's orbit, the moon appears slightly smaller than the sun.  If an eclipse occurs when the moon is furthest from earth, the moon's disk can't completely cover the sun.  The result is an "annular" eclipse.\n\nIncidentally, the moon gets slightly farther away from the earth every year.  Eventually, in the distant future, it will be too far away to produce a total eclipse of the sun.
319497
Have you ever noticed that the sun appears to come up on one side of the horizon, and then several hours later it seems to sink down on the other side of the horizon?\n\nIf you ever noticed this phenomenon, you were aware of the Earth spinning.
78122
Yes the moon is getting further away from us each year at a rate of aboout 4 centimetres a year.  The moon helps stabilise the Earth's rotation and stops us "flopping around".  In 2 billion years the moon will have moved far enough away to loose its influence.  The effect of this on the Earth is not known.
874489
Earth's average distance from the sun is a little bit under 93 million miles. The closets the Earth gets to the sun is about 90 million miles and the farthest is about 96 million miles.
99768
Sort of!  As the sun slowly runs out of (mostly hydrogen) fuel, it will expand into a red giant and it's radius will be greater than the current position of the Earth.  However, the Earth's orbit is currently projected to move farther out while this happens so our planet will not actually be engulfed by the sun.  It will, however, experience a very large temperature increase.