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Briefly:

The length of Earth's orbit can be measured in time or space.

That is 365.25 days or 940,000,000 kilometers or 584,000,000 miles.

See related links from NASA.

Explanation:

Time: Length of Year

The length of time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun is

365.24219 standard days, where a standard day is defined as 24 hours, not the time it takes the Earth to rotate about is axis.

The time it takes the Earth to orbit around the Sun changes by a few minutes each year because the Earth's path is slightly affected by the other planets, mostly Saturn and Jupiter. In 2007 the year was about 11 minutes longer and in 2010 it was 12 minutes shorter, but in 2013, it will be within a minute.

Space: Circumference of Ellipse

Two ways to calculate the length.

1. Use the average speed times the length of a year.

For Earth, the orbital period (year) is 365.25 days which takes place at an average of distance of 149,600,000 km from the sun at an average speed of 29.8 km/s.

(365.25 days) * 29.8 * (km / s) = 940 416 480 kilometers

2. Use geometry.

If the Earth's orbit were a circle, the length of the orbit would be the circumference,

C=2 pi r.

2 * pi * (149 600 000 kilometers) = 939 964 522 kilometers

Since the orbit is more nearly an ellipses, we could approximate the circumference as C= pi (a+b), but that does not actually improve the accuracy. The exact calculation of the circumference of an ellipse turns out to be difficult and has been a topic that has occupied the world's best mathematicians. But, for accuracies we need, our answer above is within one percent.

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12y ago

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