EARTH AT APHELION:

[Whitters]

Space Weather News for July 3, 2003
http://spaceweather.com

EARTH AT APHELION: Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, it's an ellipse.
This means our planet is not always the same distance from the sun. The
greatest distance, which astronomers call aphelion, occurs this year on
the Fourth of July. Curiously, the globally-averaged temperature of Earth
is greatest when we are farthest from the sun. Follow the links on
spaceweather.com and find out why.