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Movement of the Planets in the Solar System

The document explains the movement of planets in the Solar System, detailing how Earth orbits the Sun and categorizing the planets into inner, gas giants, and outer groups. It discusses the concept of retrograde motion, which is an optical illusion caused by the relative positions and speeds of the planets as observed from Earth. Additionally, it highlights the significance of observation in understanding planetary movements and the historical challenges faced by astronomers in explaining these phenomena.

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Jeyzel Llamar
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10 views2 pages

Movement of the Planets in the Solar System

The document explains the movement of planets in the Solar System, detailing how Earth orbits the Sun and categorizing the planets into inner, gas giants, and outer groups. It discusses the concept of retrograde motion, which is an optical illusion caused by the relative positions and speeds of the planets as observed from Earth. Additionally, it highlights the significance of observation in understanding planetary movements and the historical challenges faced by astronomers in explaining these phenomena.

Uploaded by

Jeyzel Llamar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Movement of the Planets in the Solar System

We live on a planet called Earth that orbits the Sun once every 365 ¼
days. Earth is one of the eight known planets in the Solar System while the
Sun is a very ordinary star about half-way through its lifetime with another
5,000 million years to go. The only reason the Sun does not look like the
other stars is because it is much nearer to us. Even so, at 147 million
kilometers (93 million miles) away, it still takes about 8 minutes for light
from the Sun to reach us. All the planets orbit the Sun in more or less the
same plane. This is called the plane of the ecliptic.
The planets are not evenly spaced but are in three groups: the inner
planets, the gas giants, and the outer planets. The inner planets are Mercury,
Venus, Earth and Mars. The gas giants are Jupiter and Saturn. And the outer
planets are Uranus and Neptune.
Pluto lost its status as a planet in 2006 and analysis of the orbits of
comets has suggested that there may be another planet, between 1 and 10
times the size of Jupiter. This planet, if it exists, is about three trillion miles
out from the Sun and is invisible to telescopes.
Much of the information about the planets in the Solar System has been
determined by observation. The planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn can
all be seen with the naked eye. However, much better information can be
gathered with a telescope and, better still, by satellite and space probes.
The name planets come from the Greek word planetos which means
wanderer. This is because, unlike the stars whose position relative to each
other is fixed, the planets appear to wander across the sky, first going ahead
of the fixed stars and then appearing to stop and fall behind. As you can
imagine, trying to devise theories to explain why this happened was a major
preoccupation for many astronomers for much of history.
As seen from the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the planets all appear
to move along the ecliptic. More precisely, the ecliptic is the Sun's apparent
path among the stars over the course of a year. It is actually the Earth that
moves about the Sun, and not the other way around, but because of our
orbital motion, the Sun seems to move across the backdrop of distant stars.
The planets do not remain exactly on the ecliptic, but they always stay fairly
close to it.
Unlike the Sun, however, the planets do not always make steady
progress along the ecliptic. They usually move in the same direction as the
Sun, but from time to time they seem to slow down, stop, and reverse
direction. This retrograde motion was a great puzzle to ancient astronomers.
Copernicus gave the correct explanation. He said all planets, including the
Earth, move around the Sun in the same direction. Retrograde motion is an
illusion created when we observe other planets from the moving planet
Earth.
It is easiest to understand the retrograde motion of the inner planets,
Mercury and Venus. These planets are closer to the Sun than Earth, and they
orbit the Sun faster. From our point of view, the Sun trundles along the
ecliptic due to our orbital motion while Mercury and Venus run rings around
the Sun. So, at some time we see these planets moving in the same direction
as the Sun while at other times we see them moving in the opposite
direction.
For the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and so on, the explanation
is a bit subtler. These planets are farther from the Sun than Earth, and they
orbit the Sun more slowly. From time to time we pass one of these planets,
and when that happens, the planet seems to be moving backwards because
we are moving faster than it does. At such times we naturally see the Sun
and the planet in opposite parts of the sky; the planet is said to be in
opposition to the Sun. Opposition is a good time to observe an outer planet;
it is above the horizon all night, and relatively close to the Earth.
An outer planet's apparent motion is always retrograde for a month or
more before and after opposition. The duration of retrograde motion depends
on the planet; it's shortest for Mars, and generally longest for Neptune. The
moment when a planet's apparent motion changes direction is called a
stationary point, because at that instant the planet appears to be more or
less stationary with respect to the stars. An outer planet always has one
stationary point before opposition, and another stationary point after
opposition.
Venus and Mars are the two planets that come nearest to the Earth. As
all three planets orbit the Sun, the view of our neighbors will constantly
change in various ways. By watching the apparent motion, change in
distance, and change in phase of these two planets, we can see that many
different effects are explained by one basic idea that all planets orbit the
Sun.

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