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Earth's rotation. Earth's rotation or Earth's spin is the rotation of planet Earth around its own axis, as well as changes in the orientation of the rotation axis in space. Earth rotates eastward, in prograde motion. As viewed from the northern polar star Polaris, Earth turns counterclockwise . The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North ...
The apex of the Sun's way, or the solar apex, is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's Galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. The Sun's orbit about the Milky Way is ...
Conversely, when the Moon reaches its apogee, its orbital motion is slower than its rotation, revealing eight degrees of longitude of its western (left) far side. This is referred to as optical libration in longitude. The Moon's axis of rotation is inclined by in total 6.7° relative to the normal to the plane of the ecliptic.
Lunar node. The lunar nodes are the two points where the Moon's orbital path crosses the ecliptic, the Sun's apparent yearly path on the celestial sphere. A lunar node is either of the two orbital nodes of the Moon, that is, the two points at which the orbit of the Moon intersects the ecliptic. The ascending (or north) node is where the Moon ...
The prime meridian is the centre of the near side of the Moon. A planetary coordinate system (also referred to as planetographic, planetodetic, or planetocentric) [1] [2] is a generalization of the geographic, geodetic, and the geocentric coordinate systems for planets other than Earth. Similar coordinate systems are defined for other solid ...
The near side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that always faces towards Earth, opposite to the far side. Only one side of the Moon is visible from Earth because the Moon rotates on its axis at the same rate that the Moon orbits the Earth—a situation known as tidal locking . The Moon is directly illuminated by the Sun, and the cyclically ...
This definition is independent of the object's direction of rotation about its axis. This implies that an object's direction of rotation, when viewed from above its north pole, may be either clockwise or counterclockwise. The direction of rotation exhibited by most objects in the solar system (including Sun and Earth) is counterclockwise.
China's Chang'e 6 probe returned on Earth with rock and soil samples from the little-explored far side of the moon in a global first. “I now declare that the Chang’e 6 Lunar Exploration ...