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Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 149.60 million km (92.96 million mi), or 8.317 light-minutes, [ 1 ] in a counterclockwise direction as viewed from above the Northern Hemisphere. One complete orbit takes 365.256 days (1 sidereal year ), during which time Earth has traveled 940 million km (584 million mi). [ 2 ] Ignoring the ...
The South Pole is the other point where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface, in Antarctica. Earth rotates once in about 24 hours with respect to the Sun, but once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds with respect to other distant stars . Earth's rotation is slowing slightly with time; thus, a day was shorter in the past.
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 ...
Sun path, sometimes also called day arc, refers to the daily and seasonal arc-like path that the Sun appears to follow across the sky as the Earth rotates and orbits the Sun. The Sun's path affects the length of daytime experienced and amount of daylight received along a certain latitude during a given season.
This makes the Venusian surface hotter than Mercury's, which has a minimum surface temperature of 53 K (−220 °C; −364 °F) and maximum surface temperature of 700 K (427 °C; 801 °F), even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance.
The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun throughout the course of a year. [ 4] Because Earth takes one year to orbit the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun takes one year to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic. With slightly more than 365 days in one year, the Sun moves a little less than 1° eastward [ 5] every day.
The solar azimuth angle is the azimuth (horizontal angle with respect to north) of the Sun's position. [1] [2] [3] This horizontal coordinate defines the Sun 's relative direction along the local horizon, whereas the solar zenith angle (or its complementary angle solar elevation) defines the Sun's apparent altitude .
The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of the two foci. Kepler's first law placing the Sun at the focus of an elliptical orbit Heliocentric coordinate system (r, θ) for ellipse. Also shown are: semi-major axis a, semi-minor axis b and semi-latus rectum p; center of ellipse and its two foci marked by large dots