what is the distance between the earth and the sun?
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M$4 Answers
The so-called "Astronomical Unit" or AU is approximately equal to the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun as it completes one revolution and is 149,597,871 km. See http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/glossary/au.html for more information on how the AU is defined (roughly speaking it is the radius of a circular orbit in which a test mass orbiting the sun would take the same length of time to complete its orbit as does the Earth).
This distance is approximately equal to 8 light minutes, which means that when we view the sun from Earth, we see it as it was just over 8 minutes ago. When solar activity erupts from the surface of the sun, the wave-front of light takes those 8 and a bit minutes to reach the Earth, with high energy particles very slightly behind. Unfortunately, it is impossible to get early warning as there is no means of transferring such a warning from near the sun to the Earth any faster than the speed at which the electromagnetic (EM) fields propagate from the sun to the Earth. At best, one could provide a few-second warning before highly -relativistic particles with mass (mostly protons and electrons) arrive. Particles moving at e.g. 99% of c would arrive 5 seconds behind the EM wavefront, while particles moving at 90% of c would arrive another 45 seconds later.
While many mistakenly believe that the seasons are caused by the distance between the sun and the Earth, http://www.space.com/spacewatch/301206_happy_perihelion.html provides a somewhat tongue-in-cheek explanation as to why this could not possibly be the case. The actual cause of seasons is the Earth's axial tilt, which exposes the northern hemisphere to more sunlight hours during the 6 months between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox, and the southern hemisphere to more sunlight hours during the other half of the year (the so-called Austral summer).
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The earth has a minimum distance of 146 million km (91 million miles) from the sun and the tilt axis is 23 deg. 27".
And its maximum distance from the sun is 152 million km (94.5 million miles)
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"Earth Statistics
Planetary Symbol: (not shown here)
Surface Gravity: 9.78 m/s^2
Diameter: 12,753 km (7,926 miles)
Rotation Period with respect to Sun (Length of Day): 24 hrs
Mass: 5.98x10^24 kilograms (6.5e21 tons)
Rotation Period with respect to stars (Sidereal Day): 23 hrs 56 min
Density: 5,515 kg/m^3
Revolution Period about the Sun (Length of a Year): 365 days 5 hrs
Minimum Distance from Sun: 146 million km (91 million miles)
Tilt of Axis: 23o 27"
Maximum Distance from Sun: 152 million km (94.5 million miles)
Temperature: -89o C to 57.7o C (-128o F to 136o F)
Orbital Semimajor Axis: 1.0 AU
Average Surface Temperature (K): 287K
Satellites: 1 (the Moon)"
As you can see, there is a minimum and a maximum distance listed for the distance between Earth and the Sun. The reason for this is that the distance between the two changes depending on the position of the earth in its orbit. At certain times of year, the earth is closer to the sun than in others. However, it tends to stay anywhere from 91 to 94.5 million miles from the Sun.
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M$
-quote-
"Hence the time is 500sec/60 or
8.333 minutes. What fraction of a year is 8.333 minutes, well that is
8.333/(60x24x365) = or 0.00001585 light years.
You can express the distance either way, but in this case 93 million
miles makes more sense."
-end of quote-
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M$
This quote is not a useful one for the question posed. Few lay people would prefer to know the distance from the Earth to the sun in light-years, or even in light-seconds or light-minutes. It also does not address the change in the Earth-sun distance as a function of the Earth's position in its elliptical orbit.
