Sun

Earth reaches its farthest point from the Sun, aphelion, in early July—the Northern Hemisphere's summer. At ~152 million km, it is 5 million km farther than in January. Seasons come from axial tilt, not distance: Earth is farthest from the Sun in midsummer.

A photon born in the core of the Sun takes tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years to reach the surface. Trapped in ultradense plasma, it is absorbed and re-emitted in a random walk. Once it escapes, it crosses 150 million km to Earth in just eight minutes.

Helium was discovered on the Sun before on Earth. During an 1868 eclipse, astronomers found an unknown yellow line in the solar Spectrum; Norman Lockyer named the new element after Helios. It was not isolated on Earth until 1895.

The Moon's orbit doesn't spiral around Earth as most people imagine. Because the Earth-Moon distance is tiny compared to the Earth-Sun distance, the Moon's actual path through space is nearly circular, traveling alongside Earth around the Sun.

Earth has 365 days in a year, but actually rotates 366 times. The extra rotation comes from its orbit around the Sun — an example of the coin rotation paradox.