# Why Earth's axis is in this particular position with respect to the perihelion?

Imagine viewing the Earth from some point in space over the North pole, and let's just assume Earth is at the perihelion of its orbit (for simplicity's sake, let's also ignore precession).

Take the plane $\pi$ which passes through the center of our planet, is orthogonal to the ecliptic and also containes the Earth's axis.

My question is: does this plane contain also the center of the Sun? It seems that this should be the case but it's not at all obvious to me.

• the more I think about the problem, the more I feel that this is a pure coincidence, since the axis will change direction in time and will not "align" with the orbit any more... – marco trevi Apr 28 '17 at 12:28
• Do you mean the perihelion of Earth's orbit, or the solstice? The two are not the same, and given that you're asking about the alignment between the Earth's axis and the ecliptic, the latter is more likely to have special properties than the former. – Michael Seifert Apr 28 '17 at 12:39
• My question is about the alignment of the perihelion and the solstice. They happen to be quite near in time in our epoch, or am I wrong? – marco trevi Apr 28 '17 at 12:49