What is the Closest Planet to Earth – Mars, Venus, or Mercury?
Planet Earth is the third planet closes to the sun. Using the old saying, “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas,” it can be remembered that the order of the planets goes like this: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (if you consider it to be a planet). Accordingly, it would seem as though either Venus or Mars would be the closes planet to Earth. But which is it?
Asking which planet is the closest to Earth is actually something of a trick question – the closest planet to Earth can change depending on the day, month, or even year. Rather than stating a time frame to describe when a given planet will be closest to our own planet, it is actually most accurate to describe a position that would indicate which planet is closes to ours. Since every planet has its own orbit around the Sun, and every orbit is a different length, all planets have different periods that would signify a year (or a complete orbit of the Sun).
When Venus is in the middle of the Sun and Earth, it is at its closest point to Earth. During this period, Venus would be the closest planet to Earth. However, there are times when Mars is actually the closest planet. For example, during August 2003, Earth and Mars were at such a point in their orbits that Mars was at one of its closest distances to Earth. It was only around 35 million miles away from the planet, which may sound like a long distance but is actually close considering it can be over 200 million miles apart from the Earth depending on where each planet is in its orbit. Given this relatively close distance, Mars was actually closer to Earth than Venus was at this time.
On rare occasions, Mercury can be the closest planet. For example, over 2,000 years ago, Mercury was only around 35 million miles away from our own planet. However, occurrences like this are extremely rare and can happen thousands of years apart.
Everyone is closest since it depends on time
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well im a little confused….. why not just answear the question……
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I THINK THAT MARS IS THE CLOSEST PLANNET TO THE EARTH
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venus is the closest planet to earth.
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April 18 2012
I’m seeing mars from my home
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i mean how can you see mars from your home i can see the moon duh
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Dawn replied:
April 26th, 2012 at 10:49 pm
I can see Mars from my home. Live in the valley and it’s always so bright.
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I love sitting here in the valley (Phoenix area) and watching r earth rotate . Wow so awesome.
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THANKS
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The closest planet is Venus read it again it says
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venus
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Venus can get closer to Earth than any other planet. Mars can on occasion get closer to Earth than Mercury ever can. However due to their orbits around the Sun both Venus and Mars can also get more distant from Earth than Mercury can, so if you calculate the relative distances of the 3 planets over a period of years, surprisingly Mercury turns out to be the closest planet to Earth for a greater number of days than either Venus or Mars.
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venus is the closest planet to earth read it in the txt
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This comment is so accurate. Thanks for your help
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All i know is that Venus is the closest planet WITHOUT READING you can JUST KNOW your planets
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Mars is the closest planet to Earth
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i love sitting on the grass starrying at the moon and i can see mars frome here 😉
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The statement about Mercury possibly being 35 million miles away from Earth is wrong. Mercury Aphelion is 0.467 astronomical unit and earth, with an almost circular orbit, is always about 1 AU away from the sun. The minimum distance is actually 48 million miles.
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Wow I didn’t know all that!!!
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it helped a bit!:)
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