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The most distant Sun (APOD 9 July 2007)
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:46 am
by gadieid
[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!
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:30 am
by Alietr
"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.
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:01 pm
by frozen
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?
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:09 pm
by BMAONE23
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.
The winters are colder down under
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:09 am
by gadieid
And the summer are hotters.
This is why Antarctica has more ice...
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:34 pm
by William Roeder
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.
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:36 pm
by rigelan
I thought antarctica just had more land mass than greenland.
9 July 2007; small grammatical error & sunspot?
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:53 pm
by cricket
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.
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
"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]
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:22 pm
by BMAONE23
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
Re: APOD (9 July 2007)
Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:07 am
by William Roeder
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.
Re: 9 July 2007; small grammatical error & sunspot?
Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:43 am
by makc
cricket wrote:The text contains a grammatical error.
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
"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.