First you need to remember some facts about the Earth. The Earth is almost a perfect globe or sphere (the force of its spinning causes it to bulge out around the Equator). It is travelling through space as part of the solar system. When we are talking about the Earth we divide it into 2 halves. These are called hemispheres. There is the Northern Hemisphere (where we find Britain) and the Southern Hemisphere (where we find Australia and South Africa). |
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The nearest star to the Earth is called the Sun. This huge ball of hot, glowing gas is 15 million degrees Celsius at the centre, and is over a million times the size of the Earth. It looks different to the other stars in the sky because the Earth is relatively close to it - about 150 million kilometres away. Like all of the planets in our Solar System the Earth travels around, or orbits, the Sun. The Earth's orbit around the Sun is elliptical. This means that it isn't a circle - it is more like a stretched circle. The Sun is very important to the Earth. All of our energy comes from the Sun in the form of light and heat. Without the Sun's energy life would not exist on Earth. |
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Try this quiz question to check what you have learnt. Don't worry if you get it wrong.
Which of these is right?
That is correct. The Earth moves around the Sun. We call this movement the Earth's orbit.
It takes the Earth 365 days, or one year, to orbit the Sun.
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At different times of the year we see different patterns of stars (constellations) in the night sky: the stars
appear to move across the sky over the course of a year. If the Earth was still, and instead the Sun moved around
the Earth, the stars would not appear to move in this way. This cannot be the right answer.
Try again
If neither moved around the other then the Sun would shine on the same part of the Earth all
the time, and the rest of the globe would be in permanent darkness. This cannot be the right answer.
Try again