Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, approaches our star 47 million kilometers in its elliptical orbit, while it is believed that the different objects located in the so-called Oort Cloud (the icy layer on the outside of the solar system) are they are approximately one light year away (traveling from the Sun at the speed of light, it would take us almost a year to reach it).
But what is the distance between the Earth and the Sun?
Taking into account that the Sun’s energy takes eight minutes to reach the Earth from its surface, we know that the sun king is approximately 149,597,870 kilometers away. This distance is known by the name of astronomical unit (also known as AU), and it is used mainly to measure distances throughout the entire solar system.
For example, Neptune is 30.07 AU from the Sun (30.07 astronomical units), while Jupiter is just 5.2 AU. According to NASA, the distance to Proxima Centauri, the closest star to us, is around 268,770 AU. But to measure longer distances, astronomers use the light year, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth year (63,239 AU). Therefore, Proxima Centauri would be about 4.25 light years distant.
At the beginning of January, what we know as perihelion occurs, which is considered the closest approximation of the Earth to the Sun, (about 146 million kilometers); while aphelion is the point furthest from the Sun to which the Earth reaches. It occurs in early July, and is around 152 million kilometers (just over 1 AU).
