# What is angle between ray to center of the sun and its perimeter?

If I took a ray from a point on the earth P to the center of the sun. And another ray from the same point on the earth to the perimeter of the sun. What would the angle between those two rays be?

Also would that angle change based on date, or location of P on the earth?

I tried:

radius = 696392 km
distance = 1.496e8 km

= 0.2667143488630743 degrees


But not sure if that is going to change based on position or date or if there are other factor that affect this.

• You shoud use arctan. You can get minimum & maximum distances at AstroPixels. And your angular radius value shouldn't have more significant figures than your distance values. – PM 2Ring Jan 23 at 0:36
• Indeed. The angle subtended by the Sun (and the Moon) is about 10 milliradians, about half a degree. Varies a bit because of the eccentricity of the orbit of the Earth. The daily variation is probably dominated be refraction of the atmosphere. – Pieter Jan 23 at 2:03