How to Use perihelion in a Sentence

perihelion

noun
  • The closest a comet gets to the Sun is called its perihelion.
    Jamie Carter, Forbes, 24 June 2021
  • The comet will be at perihelion, its closest to the sun, on Jan. 12 and at the closest to Earth on Feb. 1.
    Julia Musto, Fox News, 5 Jan. 2023
  • The spacecraft's first perihelion -- the point in the orbit closest to the sun -- was about half the distance between the sun and Earth.
    Amy Woodyatt, CNN, 15 June 2020
  • The comet will reach its perihelion, or its closest point to the sun, on Thursday, Jan. 12.
    CBS News, 9 Jan. 2023
  • The star’s closest point to the black hole, known as perihelion, advances around in a circle by about a fifth of a degree — 12 arc minutes.
    Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 16 Apr. 2020
  • Above: 24 of the brightest outbursts observed while Comet 67P was at perihelion, its point closest to the sun.
    Corey S Powell, Discover Magazine, 1 Oct. 2016
  • At perihelion, Earth is roughly 91.4 million miles away from the sun.
    NBC News, 5 Jan. 2022
  • Earth makes its closest past on Jan. 4, which is called perihelion.
    Dave Epstein, BostonGlobe.com, 4 July 2022
  • The videos were captured during the probe’s first close perihelion passages.
    Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 20 May 2022
  • Hundreds or even thousands of meteors an hour occur when the comet's peak aligns with the comet's perihelion.
    Skyler Caruso, PEOPLE.com, 6 Oct. 2021
  • The closest of these run-ins occurs when Earth reaches aphelion, or its farthest point from the sun, and when Mars reaches perihelion, its closest point to the sun.
    Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 5 Oct. 2020
  • The notes document the duo's effort to confirm that Mercury’s perihelion, the point at which a planet is closest to the sun, changes over time due to the curvature of spacetime.
    NBC News, 23 Nov. 2021
  • If the perihelion of an object is less than 1.3 astronomical units, which is the distance between Earth and the sun, it is called a near-Earth object.
    Suryatapa Bhattacharya, WSJ, 26 Jan. 2023
  • As philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn noted, Newton's laws were retained despite the fact that they were contradicted for decades by the motions of the perihelion of Mercury and the perigee of the moon.
    Mano Singham, Scientific American, 7 Sep. 2020
  • At the bottom of Earth’s orbit - Perihelion! - Does this perihelion make my Sun look fat?
    Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 4 Jan. 2012
  • The shower reaches its perihelion – closest approach to the sun – every 33 years.
    Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News, 16 Nov. 2023
  • The exact distances of Earth’s perihelion and aphelion change a bit from year to year because of the gravitational influence of the other planets, as well as that of the moon.
    Phil Plait, Scientific American, 30 June 2023
  • Earth reached its closest point to the sun Tuesday at 1:52 a.m. EST, a configuration known as perihelion.
    NBC News, 5 Jan. 2022
  • Specifically, astronomers look how each of these planets’ perihelion – their point of closest approach to the sun – shifts over millions of years.
    Korey Haynes, Discover Magazine, 6 Mar. 2019
  • Each year, during wintertime in the northern hemisphere, the Earth reaches its closest point to the sun, or perihelion, and during the northern hemisphere summer the Earth hits the farthest point from the sun, or aphelion.
    Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 18 Aug. 2017
  • Over the past centuries, Mars’ orbit has been getting more and more elongated, carrying the planet even nearer to the sun at perihelion and even farther away at aphelion.
    Dave Epstein, BostonGlobe.com, 11 July 2018
  • During summer in the southern hemisphere, Earth’s orbit is closer to the sun and reaches a point called perihelion in early January.
    Kasha Patel, Anchorage Daily News, 21 July 2023
  • Yet with each go-round (Mercury has an 88-day year), the planet stubbornly appeared out of place during perihelion from where astronomers expected it.
    Adam Hadhazy, Discover Magazine, 26 Feb. 2015
  • In our own solar system, astronomers had long known that the planet Mercury behaves like this; its perihelion advances around the sun by the microscopic amount of 43 seconds of arc a century.
    Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 16 Apr. 2020
  • If the comet's perihelion (its closest point to the sun) coincides with the shower's peak, a rare meteor storm can occur creating thousands of meteor showers per hour.
    Skyler Caruso, Peoplemag, 4 Oct. 2022
  • These eruptions were detected by multiple instruments on the spacecraft during a close flyby of the sun, which is called a perihelion, on February 10.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 18 May 2021
  • Mars’ orbit is more elliptical than Earth’s, so the difference between perihelion and aphelion is greater.
    Dave Epstein, BostonGlobe.com, 11 July 2018
  • Lescarbault’s sightings were never confirmed, and the perihelion precession of Mercury remained a puzzle for nearly six more decades.
    Katia Moskvitch, WIRED, 6 May 2018
  • Periodically the planet will linger close to the perihelion distance—generally for a few thousand years or so.
    Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 21 July 2023
  • The most surprising thing about this cycle, though, is probably when its extremes occur on the calendar: perihelion is in January every year, while aphelion is in July.
    Phil Plait, Scientific American, 30 June 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'perihelion.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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