What is the distance from the Earth to the Sun?

Q: What is the distance from Earth to the sun?

A: The distance from the Earth to the sun varies slightly as Earth orbit around it. However, the average distance is extremely far. On average throughout its approximately 365-day orbit, Earth is about 149,600,000 kilometers or 92,900,000 miles from the sun. That is to say, it is almost 150 MILLION kilometers or 93 MILLION miles. 

This distance is so vast, light from the sun takes minutes to...

Q: What is the distance from Earth to the sun?

A: The distance from the Earth to the sun varies slightly as Earth orbit around it. However, the average distance is extremely far. On average throughout its approximately 365-day orbit, Earth is about 149,600,000 kilometers or 92,900,000 miles from the sun. That is to say, it is almost 150 MILLION kilometers or 93 MILLION miles. 

This distance is so vast, light from the sun takes minutes to reach Earth. Even at light speed--which is almost 300,000 km per second or 186,000 miles per second--it takes about 8 minutes 20 seconds for light from the sun to reach Earth. 

The first accurate scientific estimates of the distance from Earth to the sun were made by the astronomer Cassini in the late 1600s using a technique called parallax. This technique uses measurements taken from objects from different angles to estimate their actual distance. 

Although the sun appears relatively small in the sky, its actual diameter is about 864,000 miles, around 109 times the size of Earth (see https://www.nasa.gov/sun). This may help give some idea of just how far away the sun actually is.