Starship Asterisk*

[u]APOD[/u] wrote:A common misconception is that the Sun is most distant during the winter,

It is not a misconception. It is absloutly true provided that you are in the southern hemisphere!

"These two solar images were taken from Spain during 2006, but the same effect can be seen in any year from any Earth-bound location."

Well, except if you're near the North/South pole, in which case you wouldn't be able to see the sun during January/July.

Does the sun being closest in the summer & farthest in the winter in the southern hemisphere, result in warmer summers & colder winters overall than in northern hemisphere?

The point is this
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/ ... stics.html
at its closest distance to the sun, in January (northern winter) the earth is 91 million miles from the sun,at its farthest from the sun (northern summer) the earth is 94.5 million miles from the sun. During the hotter northern hemisphere months, the earth is 3.5 million miles farther from the sun than during the colder ones.

And the summer are hotters.
This is why Antarctica has more ice...

frozen wrote:Does the sun being closest in the summer & farthest in the winter in the southern hemisphere, result in warmer summers & colder winters overall than in northern hemisphere?

I remember seeing the answer to that question. The position adds an additional 2*C to the average temperature swing.

I thought antarctica just had more land mass than greenland.

Thanks for a great picture to show my non-scientist friends when trying to explain that it's the tilt of the earth (and not the eccentricity of our orbit) that gives us our seasons! By the way, what is the black dot in the second image?
The text contains a grammatical error. "If the Earth's orbit was perfectly circular," should read "If the Earth's orbit WERE perfectly circular," as the verb is in the subjunctive case.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctiv ... in_English ).
I love APOD; what a fantastic site! [/i]

The black spot in the second image is a sunspot that was visible when the image was taken in July 2006.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070709.html

gadieid wrote:

[u]APOD[/u] wrote:A common misconception is that the Sun is most distant during the winter,

It is not a misconception. It is absloutly true provided that you are in the southern hemisphere!

In 12000 years from now, as the Earth precesses, It will be absolutely false down under.

cricket wrote:The text contains a grammatical error. "If the Earth's orbit was perfectly circular," should read "If the Earth's orbit WERE perfectly circular," as the verb is in the subjunctive case.

thanks for info, now I get where "if I were you" comes from.