Distance from earth to moon in 'm
- how far is it to moon
- how far is it to moon from earth
- how far is it to the moon and back
- how far is it to the moon in miles
Sun distance to earth!
What is a light year?
The Moon's elliptical orbit
No orbit is perfectly circular. Some are very close, but they are all at least slightly elliptical in shape. Astronomers can measure how near to a perfect circle an orbit is by calculating its 'eccentricity'.
This is expressed by a number that is between 0 and 1.
Earth to moon travel time
The closer the eccentricity is to 0, the closer the orbit is to a circle. In fact, a circle can be thought of as a special kind of ellipse that has an eccentricity of 0.
Venus’ orbit is the least eccentric out of all of the planets in our Solar System and closest to a circle, with a value of 0.007.
Mercury’s is the most eccentric with a value of 0.2.
The eccentricity of the Moon’s orbit is 0.05. Furthermore, the Earth is not at the very centre of the Moon’s orbit either. It is located at one of the foci of the Moon’s elliptical orbit, so is closer to one edge of the orbit than the other.
Apogee, perigee and average distance - the distance to the Moon explained
Astronomers tend to talk about three different numbers when talking about the distance between the Earth
- how far is it to the moon in km
- how far is it to the moon and back from earth