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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 Sun's path affects the length of daytime experienced and amount of daylight received along a certain latitude during a given season. The relative position of the Sun is a major factor in the heat gain of buildings and in the performance of solar energy systems. [1] Accurate location-specific knowledge of sun path and climatic conditions is ...
Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also known as Earth's revolution, is an ellipse with the Earth-Sun barycenter as one focus with a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value is close to zero, the center of the orbit is relatively close to the center of the Sun (relative to the size of the orbit).
The position of the Sun in the sky is a function of both the time and the geographic location of observation on Earth 's surface. As Earth orbits the Sun over the course of a year, the Sun appears to move with respect to the fixed stars on the celestial sphere, along a circular path called the ecliptic . Earth's rotation about its axis causes ...
Solar rotation varies with latitude. The Sun is not a solid body, but is composed of a gaseous plasma. Different latitudes rotate at different periods. The source of this differential rotation is an area of current research in solar astronomy. [1] The rate of surface rotation is observed to be the fastest at the equator (latitude φ = 0°) and ...
Diurnal motion (from Latin diurnus 'daily', from Latin diēs 'day') is an astronomical term referring to the apparent motion of celestial objects (e.g. the Sun and stars) around Earth, or more precisely around the two celestial poles, over the course of one day. It is caused by Earth's rotation around its axis, so almost every star appears to ...
The rotational axis of Earth, for example, is the imaginary line that passes through both the North Pole and South Pole, whereas the Earth's orbital axis is the line perpendicular to the imaginary plane through which the Earth moves as it revolves around the Sun; the Earth's obliquity or axial tilt is the angle between these two lines.
In this scheme, clockwise from north at 90° intervals one encounters west, south, and east, and the direction of solar rotation is from east to west. Heliographic. Heliographic coordinate systems are used to identify locations on the Sun's surface. The two most commonly used systems are the Stonyhurst and Carrington systems.