What is aphelion?

Aphelion is the point where Earth travels farthest from the Sun in its orbit.

Imagine you're swinging on a swing, sometimes you’re really high up, and sometimes you're lower down. Aphelion is like that highest point in your swing’s path. When Earth gets to aphelion, it's about 95 million miles away from the Sun, that's pretty far!

Earth doesn’t go around the Sun in a perfect circle; instead, its path is more like an oval or stretched-out circle. This shape is called an ellipse. Because of this wobbly path, sometimes Earth is closer to the Sun (this point is called perihelion), and sometimes it's farther away, that farthest point is aphelion.

Think of it like riding a bike around a track that’s not perfectly round, you go faster when you're close to the center, and slower when you're on the outside. Earth moves a little slower at aphelion because it's farther from the Sun.