Q.The earth reaches its perihelion in:
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →The Earth is closest to the Sun in early January, so the correct answer is (d) January.
The question touches on a lovely quirk of our planet’s orbit. Most people assume the Earth is nearest the Sun in summer, when it feels hottest, but the opposite is true for the Northern Hemisphere. The Earth’s path around the Sun is not a perfect circle; it is a slight ellipse. That means there is one point where our planet swings closest to the Sun — called perihelion — and another where it drifts farthest away, called aphelion.
Perihelion occurs in the first few days of January. At that moment, the Earth is about 147 million kilometres from the Sun, roughly 5 million kilometres closer than at aphelion, which happens in early July. The difference is small in cosmic terms, but it is real and measurable. The key is that this closeness has almost nothing to do with our seasons. Seasons are governed by the tilt of the Earth’s axis, not by distance from the Sun. In January, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, so even though we are nearer to it, the sunlight strikes at a lower angle and days are shorter — hence winter.
The word “perihelion” comes from Greek: peri meaning near, and helios meaning Sun. So it literally means “near the Sun.” Its opposite, aphelion, means “away from the Sun.”
So why do people instinctively pick July? Because in the Northern Hemisphere, July is the warmest month, and it feels natural to link heat with proximity. But the Southern Hemisphere experiences its summer in January, when the Earth is actually closest to the Sun. That is a neat reminder that distance is not the driver of seasonal warmth — axial tilt is. …
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