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This animation is 100 times faster than the inner planet animation. The planets and other large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earth's orbit, known as the ecliptic. Smaller icy objects such as comets frequently orbit at significantly greater angles to this plane.
Most of the planets orbit the Sun very nearly in the same plane in which Earth orbits, the ecliptic. Five planets (Earth included) lined up along the ecliptic in July 2010, illustrating how the planets orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane. Photo taken at sunset, looking west over Surakarta, Java, Indonesia.
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Despite being correct in saying that the planets revolved around the Sun, Copernicus was incorrect in defining their orbits. Introducing physical explanations for movement in space beyond just geometry, Kepler correctly defined the orbit of planets as follows: [1] [2] [5]: 53–54 The planetary orbit is not a circle with epicycles, but an ellipse.
Typically the Earth will circle the Sun in one minute, while the other planets will complete an orbit in time periods proportional to their actual motion. Thus Venus, which takes 224.7 days to orbit the Sun, will take 37 seconds to complete an orbit on an orrery, and Jupiter will take 11 minutes, 52 seconds.
In astrodynamics or celestial mechanics, an elliptic orbit or elliptical orbit is a Kepler orbit with an eccentricity of less than 1; this includes the special case of a circular orbit, with eccentricity equal to 0. In a stricter sense, it is a Kepler orbit with the eccentricity greater than 0 and less than 1 (thus excluding the circular orbit).
The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets, exoplanets orbiting other stars, or binary stars.
The Earth is one of several planets revolving around a stationary sun in a determined order. The Earth has three motions: daily rotation, annual revolution, and annual tilting of its axis. Retrograde motion of the planets is explained by the Earth's motion.