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The Earth phase, Terra phase, terrestrial phase, or phase of Earth, is the shape of the directly sunlit portion of Earth as viewed from the Moon (or elsewhere extraterrestrially). From the Moon, the Earth phases gradually and cyclically change over the period of a synodic month (about 29.53 days), as the orbital positions of the Moon around ...
The evolution of the apparent diameter and phases of Venus. A planetary phase is a certain portion of a planet's area that reflects sunlight as viewed from a given vantage point, as well as the period of time during which it occurs. The phase is determined by the phase angle, which is the angle between the planet, the Sun and the Earth.
Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also called 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 amount of facula and plage area varies in phase with the ... that the alignment of the planets would alter the Sun's solar wind and, in turn, Earth's weather ...
His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same centre as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the earth to revolve bears such ...
The Earth's orbit varies between nearly circular and mildly elliptical (its eccentricity varies). When the orbit is more elongated, there is more variation in the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and in the amount of solar radiation, at different times in the year.
Earth orbits the Sun, making Earth the third-closest planet to the Sun and part of the inner Solar System. Earth's average orbital distance is about 150 million km (93 million mi), which is the basis for the astronomical unit (AU) and is equal to roughly 8.3 light minutes or 380 times Earth's distance to the Moon .
As seen from the orbiting Earth, the Sun appears to move with respect to the fixed stars, and the ecliptic is the yearly path the Sun follows on the celestial sphere. This process repeats itself in a cycle lasting a little over 365 days. The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of Earth around the Sun.