Happy New Year! Fun fact: although January 1 is a somewhat arbitrary date to celebrate Earth’s annual rotation about the Sun, it’s given a bit of astronomical validity by the fact that it lines up almost perfectly with perihelion (our planet’s closest approach to the Sun). That happens tomorrow, at 5:49 pm ET.
Of course, you wouldn’t know that we’re currently sitting a mere 91 million miles from the Sun if you happened to be in Greenland right now. This beautiful NASA image was captured last year, toward the end of an Arctic winter, when the Sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. This time of year, Greenland is totally dark. by themadstone