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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 ...
One complete orbit takes 365.256 days (1 sidereal year), during which time Earth has traveled 940 million km (584 million mi). 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 ...
The poles of astronomical bodies are determined based on their axis of rotation in relation to the celestial poles of the celestial sphere. Astronomical bodies include stars, planets, dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies such as comets and minor planets (e.g., asteroids ), as well as natural satellites and minor-planet moons .
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 closest encounter to the Sun so far predicted is the low-mass orange dwarf star Gliese 710 / HIP 89825 with roughly 60% the mass of the Sun. It is currently predicted to pass 0.1696 ± 0.0065 ly (10 635 ± 500 au) from the Sun in 1.290 ± 0.04 million years from the present, close enough to significantly disturb the Solar System's Oort cloud.
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 celestial bodies, such as in the selenographic coordinates for the ...
The orbit of the Moon is a nearly circular ellipse about the Earth (the semimajor and semiminor axes are 384,400 km and 383,800 km, respectively: a difference of only 0.16%). The equation of the ellipse yields an eccentricity of 0.0549 and perigee and apogee distances of 362,600 km (225,300 mi) and 405,400 km (251,900 mi) respectively (a ...
Orbital position vector, orbital velocity vector, other orbital elements. In astrodynamics and celestial dynamics, the orbital state vectors (sometimes state vectors) of an orbit are Cartesian vectors of position ( ) and velocity ( ) that together with their time ( epoch) ( ) uniquely determine the trajectory of the orbiting body in space. [1 ...