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The declination of the Sun, δ ☉, is the angle between the rays of the Sun and the plane of the Earth's equator. The Earth's axial tilt (called the obliquity of the ecliptic by astronomers) is the angle between the Earth's axis and a line perpendicular to the Earth's orbit. The Earth's axial tilt changes slowly over thousands of years but its ...
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.
For planets and other rotating celestial bodies, the angle of the equatorial plane relative to the orbital plane – such as the tilt of the Earth's poles toward or away from the Sun – is sometimes also called inclination, but less ambiguous terms are axial tilt or obliquity.
axial tilt. Also obliquity. The angle between an object's rotational axis and its orbital axis, or, equivalently, the angle between its equatorial plane and orbital plane. Axial tilt usually does not change considerably during a single orbital period; Earth's axial tilt is the cause of the seasons. Axial tilt is distinct from orbital inclination.
Afternoon analemma photo taken in 1998–99 in Murray Hill, New Jersey, U.S., by Jack Fishburn.The Bell Laboratories building is in the foreground. In astronomy, an analemma (/ ˌ æ n ə ˈ l ɛ m ə /; from Ancient Greek ἀνάλημμα (analēmma) 'support') [a] is a diagram showing the position of the Sun in the sky as seen from a fixed location on Earth at the same mean solar time over ...
Sun path, sometimes also called day arc, refers to the daily (sunrise to sunset) 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.
For example, with an axial tilt is 23°, and at a latitude of 45°, then the summer's peak sun angle is 68° (giving sin(68°) = 93% insolation at the surface), while winter's least sun angle is 22° (giving sin(22°) = 37% insolation at the surface). Thus, the greater the axial tilt, the stronger the seasons' variations at a given latitude. [4]
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System.It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light and infrared radiation with 10% at ultraviolet energies.