We are surrounded by many planets, but which is the closest? In this article, we’ll examine the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, as well as their distance from us. These planets are relatively close, but not so close that they’re actually in our neighborhood. The closest one, however, is Mercury, which is closer to Earth than any of the other planets.
Sun
During early January, the Earth is at its closest to the Sun, a distance of approximately 91.4 million miles. The Earth’s tilt and rotation around the sun affects this distance. These changes cause the seasons to occur. The Earth is closest to the Sun in the month of January, and further away in the month of July. The planets’ orbits around the sun also affect the Earth’s distance from the Sun.
The Earth is not in a perfect circle; it changes its orbit by about three million miles per year. This difference is nearly 13 times greater than the distance between Earth and the moon. This period of time is known as aphelion and is marked on sundials. As the Earth travels around the sun, the Earth travels at a speed of 19 miles per second.
The Earth’s closest proximity to the Sun occurs early Tuesday, which makes this date significant for astronomy. The sun is closest to Earth at around 1:52 a.m. ET on January 5th, which is the same time as the summer solstice.
Mercury
Mercury is the closest planet to the Earth. This is because of its close proximity to the sun and its orbit around the sun. Because Mercury is so close to the sun, it can’t get far away from the Earth. Despite its close proximity to the sun, Mercury is still a bit more than one AU from the Earth.
Mercury is about the size of our moon. Its atmosphere doesn’t protect it from impact, so it is filled with craters. In fact, an asteroid about 60 miles across smashed into Mercury about 4.6 billion years ago, causing a crater on its surface that is the size of Texas. This might have caused the planet’s strange spin.
Scientists have determined that Mercury’s orbit has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance. This means that the planet rotates around the Sun three times every two solar revolutions. The resonance is stable at Mercury’s perihelion, when the solar tide is highest. Because Mercury’s orbit varies chaotically over millions of years, it is not entirely clear when Mercury formed this resonance state. However, accurate modeling of Mercury’s tidal response suggests that it was in this state as early as 20 million years after its formation.
Although Venus is closer to the Earth than Mercury, it spends a lot more time on the other side of the sun. However, scientists from NASA and the U.S. Army’s Los Alamos National Lab used this data to study the distances between planets. They found that Mercury was the closest to Earth, followed by Venus and Mars.
Venus
The planet Venus is the second closest to the sun. It has a thick atmosphere that consists mostly of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide, trapping heat and creating a greenhouse effect. Surface temperatures on Venus can reach 880 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead. The surface pressure is 90 times greater than that of Earth. Wintertime on Venus doesn’t offer much respite from the heat. Its axial tilt is three degrees.
Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of 108 million kilometers or 67 million miles. It takes 225 Earth days for the planet to complete one orbit around the Sun. Its orbit is not elliptical, but rather almost circular. Because Venus is so close to Earth, its distance from the Sun fluctuates little.
Venus is a bright, white planet with an iron core. The planet’s surface is covered in a thin crust of rock. This crust bulges as the mantle shifts, creating volcanoes. The planet is also covered in clouds and has a thick atmosphere that filters sunlight.
Earth
Mars is the closest planet to Earth. Its shortest approach is only 0.28 AU (25 million miles or 41 million kilometers) away. However, most scientific sources refer to Venus as the closest planet to Earth. The average distance between Venus and Earth is approximately 41 million km. The line-up of the usual suspects was drawn by BBC science correspondent Tim Harford.
The formula used to determine the closest planet to Earth uses the average distance between the two planets. This method is commonly used to determine the distance between two planets. However, this is only an approximate measurement. During the rest of their orbits, planets are much farther away. Thus, the formula needs to take the average distance of all planets into account.
Using a computer simulation, scientists have analyzed the average distance between planets. They found that Mercury was closer to Earth than Venus, Mars is closer than Earth, and Mercury is the closest planet to all seven planets in our solar system. This is because Mercury orbits the Sun more closely than Venus.
Barnard’s Star
Barnard’s Star is the fourth closest star to our sun. It has a planet of 3.2 times Earth’s mass that takes 232.8 days to orbit once. Despite its closeness to the star, Barnard’s planet has a very low temperature, being -170 degrees Celsius.
Scientists have long suspected that Barnard’s star may have planets around it. In fact, Project Daedalus, a project of the British Interplanetary Society, proposed sending an unmanned spacecraft to study this system. Because Barnard’s Star is so close, it’s an attractive target for exoplanet hunters. The star is a red dwarf that is only one-sixth as massive as our sun, and it is about three percent as bright. It is estimated to be ten billion years old.
Barnard’s Star will pass by the Sun in 11,800 AD. However, it will be too dim to be seen with the naked eye. At that time, the star will be 8.5 light-years away from our Sun. This distance is only 40 percent of the distance between the Sun and Earth.
Barnard’s Star is largest proper motion
Barnard’s Star is a proper motion star that is about 1.8 pc away and moves north and west in our sky. Its motion is caused by its proper motion and trigonometric parallax. It is expected to reverse its motion in the coming months. Its orbital period is approximately 13.5 years.
Barnard’s Star is the closest proper-motion star known to humans. It is a red dwarf, about one-sixth the size of the Sun and has a temperature of 3,150 K. It is too dim to be seen with the naked eye, but small telescopes and large binoculars can make it visible.
Barnard’s Star has been studied extensively, and has received far more attention than other class M dwarf stars. Its close proximity to the celestial equator made it an attractive target for research. Scientists studied its orbit to determine if it was capable of supporting fast unmanned travel to nearby star systems.
Barnard’s Star is the fourth closest star to Earth, but it is closer to the Alpha Centauri system than the Sun. While its large apparent motion and high space velocity have prompted many early observations, recent studies have not found any evidence of planets. A good article on Barnard’s Star is found in Burnham’s Celestial Handbook. It is recommended that you read it before doing this experiment.
Barnard’s Star is closest to Johnson City TN
Astronomers have been fascinated by Barnard’s Star for some time. In fact, it was chosen as the Tier 1 target star for NASA’s optical Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). The mission’s primary goal is to detect planets within two AU of their host stars. However, because of withdrawal of NASA funding, the mission was postponed.
Barnard’s Star is a red dwarf star located in the constellation of Ophiuchus. It has a mass of about 14% of the Sun, but its apparent magnitude is only 9.5. The star is so dim that it’s virtually invisible to the naked eye, so observing it requires powerful binoculars or a telescope.
Scientists have concluded that Barnard’s star is relatively old, and formed before our galaxy became enriched in heavy elements. Observations of its proper motion suggest that it’s a Population II star, somewhere between a disk and a halo. It has a relatively slow rotation period of 130.4 days, and has a mass about two-thirds that of Jupiter.
Astronomers have long suspected that Barnard’s star has planets. This is based on reported discrepancies in the star’s motion. It was originally thought that the star was inhabited by a Jupiter-sized planet, but the evidence for this claim was discredited, and the discovery was never confirmed. However, advances in telescope technology have since allowed astronomers to identify the planet in question.
