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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 orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci. A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit.
Axial tilt of eight planets and two dwarf planets, Ceres and Pluto. All four of the innermost, rocky planets of the Solar System may have had large variations of their obliquity in the past. Since obliquity is the angle between the axis of rotation and the direction perpendicular to the orbital plane, it changes as the orbital plane changes due ...
The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci. A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. Kepler published the first two laws in 1609 and the third ...
All eight planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in the direction of the Sun's rotation, which is counterclockwise when viewed from above the Sun's north pole. Six of the planets also rotate about their axis in this same direction. The exceptions – the planets with retrograde rotation – are Venus and Uranus.
In a similar way to how the force from the table generates this phenomenon of precession in the spinning gyro, the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon on the Earth's equatorial bulge generates a very slow precession of the Earth's axis (see §Cause). This off-center push or pull causes a torque, and a torque on a spinning body results in ...
When scientists look for signs of life throughout the galaxy, planets with water are always at the top of the list.
Planets rotate at varying rates and thus may take a slightly oblate shape because of the centrifugal force. With such an oblate shape, the gravitational attraction will deviate somewhat from that of a homogeneous sphere. At larger distances the effect of this oblateness becomes negligible.