4 ms·
nit: The sun is not moving along the ecliptic or crossing the equator. It is the Earth that is actually doing all the moving.
by didgetmaster 3y ago
nit: The sun is not moving along the ecliptic or crossing the equator. It is the Earth that is actually doing all the moving.
- mannykannot 3y agoOne can choose to pin a frame of reference to the Earth, it just won't be an inertial one (and quite noticeably not.) Perhaps you would accept phrasing the sentence in question as saying the Earth-Sun axis is doing these two things?
- spiderice 3y agoThe Sun and Earth orbit around a central point between the two bodies, which happens to be very close to the center of the sun. But that doesn't change the fact that they are both orbiting around each other.
- bmacho 3y agoThis is somehow more wrong than what you answered, which was already very wrong. (Wrong in an aesthetic sense, since both are ill-defined in physics, and only carry aesthetic value in Engilsh.)
- bagels 3y agoThe point is neither central, nor solely determined by the earth and sun. The moon and Jupiter influence the orbits of the earth and sun as well (of course as do all the other bodies to a much smaller degree)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mensetmanusman 3y agoDepends on the inertial frame, the sun is flying through our galaxy :)
- dahart 3y agoIf I search for ‘ecliptic’, I get 2 different definitions: one is the “apparent path of the sun” (where the observer is the reference point), and the other is the plane of earth’s orbit around the sun (where the sun is the reference point). A good portion of the time, the plane of earth’s orbit is referred to as the ‘ecliptic plane’ and not just ‘ecliptic’. Maybe using ‘plane’ as a qualifier is a nice way to distinguish these ideas. Google’s chosen quick-definition, the one where it shows you the result without linking to a website, is the apparent-path definition.