SPACE — You may have heard the saying, ‘Tomorrow the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west.’ That means the world has not ended, the apocalypse is still far away.
But have you ever wondered why the Sun doesn’t rise from the West? It always rises in the east and sets in the west, and what mechanism is behind that?
Matt Williams of Universe Today has a great review of this. Naturally, ancient people took the Sun’s journey across the sky as a sign that it revolves around us. With the birth of modern astronomy, we know that the opposite is true.
The sun appears to revolve around us because our planet not only orbits it, but also rotates on its axis. From this, we get the path of the Sun, and the basis for measuring time.
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The Earth rotates on its axis as it revolves around the Sun. When viewed from above the northern sky, the Earth will appear to rotate counterclockwise. Therefore, to those standing on the Earth’s surface, the Sun appears to be moving around us westward at a speed of 15° per hour. This applies to all celestial bodies observed from earth, with an ‘apparent motion’ that takes them from east to west.
This also applies to most of the planets in the Solar System. Venus is one exception, rotating backwards compared to its orbit around the Sun. Uranus is another planet that not only rotates westward, but is also tilted so much that it appears to be on its side relative to the Sun.
Pluto also experiences retrograde motion, so that for those standing on its surface, the Sun will rise in the west and set in the east. In all cases, a major collision of celestial bodies is believed to be the cause. In essence, Pluto and Venus were thrown in other directions by a huge collision, while another collision hit Uranus and knocked it sideways.
With a rotation speed of 1,674.4 km/hour, the Earth takes 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds to rotate once on its axis. This means that one sidereal day is less than 24 hours long. But when combined with its orbital period, a solar day (the time it takes to return to the same place in the sky) is calculated as exactly 24 hours.
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Earth’s Orbit Around the Sun
With an average orbital speed of 107,200 km/hour, the Earth takes approximately 365,256 days, aka one sidereal year, to complete one orbit of the Sun. This means that every four years (Leap years), the Earth’s calendar must include an additional day.
Seen from northern space, the Earth’s motion appears to be orbiting the Sun counterclockwise. Combined with the tilt of its axis (tilted 23.439° to the ecliptic), this results in seasonal changes. In addition to producing temperature variations, it also results in variations in the amount of sunlight a hemisphere receives throughout the year.
Basically, when the North Pole faces the Sun, the northern hemisphere experiences summer and the southern hemisphere experiences winter. During summer, the climate becomes warm and the sun appears early in the morning sky and sets at a late hour.
In winter, the climate is generally cooler and the days are shorter. The sun rises later and sets earlier.
2023-11-19 14:32:00
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