what is the distance between the earth and the sun?

Answer 1

The average distance to the sun is 92900000 miles, though it is changing. First I should say that the Earth's orbit around the Sun is elliptical, not perfectly circular, so the Earth-Sun distance is changing as we speak just from the Earth traveling in its orbit around the Sun.

Is the orbit itself changing? Well, there are some long-period oscillations, but those are very small, and don't imply that we're systematically moving towards or away from the Sun.

There is an effect which is making us move very slowly away from the Sun. That is the tidal interaction between the Sun and the Earth. This slows down the rotation of the Sun, and pushes the Earth farther away from the Sun. The principle for the Sun-Earth system should be the same. But how big of an effect is this? It turns out that the yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and the Sun from this effect is only about one micrometer (a millionth of a meter, or a ten thousandth of a centimeter). So this is a *very* tiny effect.

There is another effect which is also small, but somewhat bigger than the tidal effect. The Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, which means the Sun is continuously transforming a small part of its mass into energy. As the mass of the Sun goes down, our orbit gets proportionally bigger. However, over the entire main sequence lifetime of the Sun (about 10 billion years), the Sun will only lose about 0.1% of its mass, which means that the Earth should move out by just ~150,000 km (small compared to the total Earth-Sun distance of ~150,000,000 km). If we assume that the Sun's rate of nuclear fusion today is the same as the average rate over those 10 billion years (a bold assumption, but it should give us a rough idea of the answer), then we're moving away from the Sun at the rate of ~1.5 cm (less than an inch) a year. I probably don't even need to mention that this is so small that we don't have to worry about freezing.

Answer 2

The distance from the sun to the Earth can be measured as 1 AU, which is equivalent to approximately 92.5 million miles (on the average, since Earth's orbit is not completely circular - it is elliptical). This also equivocates to approximately 8 light minutes from the sun.

Answer 3

All good correct answers. One mentioned that the orbit of the earth is elliptical. It is, and varies from about 91 to about 95 million miles. The closest point occurs during middle winter, and the furthest point middle summer (northern hemisphere). It is for this reason that the north-south movement in the sky of the sun (that is to say the seasonal variation of the altitude above the horizon at noon) is variable, and that is what is shown by the weirdly-shaped figure-8 (I'm not going to attempt to spell it..yes I will..anelema)..on most good globes of the earth. I probably spelled it incorrectly after all!!

Answer 4

The distance between earth and sun is not constant.
reson:-The orbit of earth around is eliptical.
So the earth is closest to the sun during the northern hemispherical winter.on an avg. the distance between earth and sun 93million miles. its nowhere near a distance of oneligth years. But yes u can say that their distance is 8.3 light minutes as it takes about 8.3 min for the light of sun to reach earth.

Answer 5

Its about 93 million miles. Also called 1 astronomical unit.

Answer 6

93 million miles

Answer 7

93 million miles

Answer 8

1 astronomical unit

Answer 9

How hot is the sun

Answer 10

93,000,000