Happy Aphelion!

[cubinator]

Tomorrow, July 4th 2016, is Earth's highest point in its orbit around the Sun! Yay random astronomy facts!

Edited July 3, 2016 by cubinator

[Atlas2342]

Heh neat. Because of how time zones work, I am living in this "tomorrow" 

[cubinator]

10 minutes ago, Atlas2342 said:

Heh neat. Because of how time zones work, I am living in this "tomorrow" 

That's why I specified the date. 

[Bill Phil]

Oh, isn't that fun. It's summer*, but we're at the farthest from the Sun. Pretty cool.

 

*almost 90% of humanity lives in the Northern Hemisphere, so it's summer for most of humanity.

[cubinator]

21 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Oh, isn't that fun. It's summer*, but we're at the farthest from the Sun. Pretty cool.

Yeah. It also means that perihelion happens really close to New Year. Earth doesn't really see the effects of its fluctuating altitude because our eccentricity is quite low, but on Mars the summers in the southern hemisphere are a lot warmer than those in the northern hemisphere because those occur during perihelion and its eccentricity is higher than ours. Sometimes it even gets above 0 °C!

Edit: And sometimes it's colder where I live than on Mars!

Edited July 3, 2016 by cubinator

[HazelPine]

And where I live it's colder than normal! And during winter! Good thing it never gets lower than 5 degrees though. 

[Superfluous J]

Happy Aphelion Day. It's all downhill from here!

[RainDreamer]

And we just keep on falling, falling down~

[cubinator]

4 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Happy Aphelion Day. It's all downhill from here!

 

2 minutes ago, RainDreamer said:

And we just keep on falling, falling down~

Well, until Perihelion day sometime in early January. Then we'll be falling up again! 

[Waxing_Kibbous]

1 hour ago, RainDreamer said:

And we just keep on falling, falling down~

 

[kerbiloid]

(Turns out though, that's why the Sun looks so small this week...)

Merry Aphelion!

[Scotius]

Still, thanks to the Earth moving slower at Aphelion, summer on the northern hemisphere last several days longer than in the south. Conversely, winter is shorter up here. Yaaay!

[p1t1o]

I live in the UK where the weather bears no respect for anything, including season, distance from sun or how many sacrificial goats you go through. The Earth could be projected out of Sol System into deep space and in the UK it would still be overcast and damp.

[cubinator]

Aphelion occurs at 12:24 PM EDT, or 16:24 GMT. Just letting everyone know so you can, uh, I dunno. Jump, maybe?

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, cubinator said:

so you can, uh, I dunno. Jump, maybe?

Turn prograde and perform an apoapsis burn.

[cubinator]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Turn prograde and perform an apoapsis burn.

Or save some delta-V on a retrograde burn. Neither planet there is in position for a Hohmann transfer, though.

[p1t1o]

Do we have the dV needed to circularise?

[cubinator]

59 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Do we have the dV needed to circularise?

Depends. Are we using the force of jumping, or do we need to all fart prograde at the same time?

[p1t1o]

16 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Depends. Are we using the force of jumping, or do we need to all fart prograde at the same time?

Silly, those won't work. I propose a global initiative (we still have 6 minutes) to paint an appropriately oriented "go faster stripe" on their house. The cumulative effect should do the job. If you go deep into the maths, this is exactly how Cannae/EM drives work. 

[cubinator]

21 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Silly, those won't work. I propose a global initiative (we still have 6 minutes) to paint an appropriately oriented "go faster stripe" on their house. The cumulative effect should do the job. If you go deep into the maths, this is exactly how Cannae/EM drives work. 

We actually have an hour and six three minutes. The millions of stripes on the American flags people are toting right now should help, too. 

Edited July 4, 2016 by cubinator

[kerbiloid]

We should be very careful to keep the Earth rotation untouched.
So,
those who currently have 12h (probably America) would turn their... face in one direction,
midnight  (East Asia) - in the opposite direction,
others - make their burn in radial (from/to the Sun) direction to compensate the angular impulse.