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What is The Orbital and the Rotational characteristic of The Earth?

                        



Before knowing about the orbital and rotational characteristics of earth we need to know about our earth. So, our earth is a member of the solar system. It is the third planet from the sun. It is only the planet known to have an atmosphere containing free oxygen, oceans of water on its surface, and life.

   Orbital characteristics of the earth:  An orbit is a cyclic, regular and repeating path, by which one object revolves around another one. In our solar system, a large number of orbit present around the sun, and the objects (including the planets and their moons, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and so on) orbit it directly or indirectly.

     The orbit of our earth planet is not a perfect circle, but it rather has the character of an oval-shaped ellipse. Because the two largest gas giant planets of our solar system exert a small gravitational attraction on the earth. This changes the orbit of the earth from nearly circular to a slightly oval-shaped ellipse. Earth, elliptical orbit affects the weather. Because of the elliptical orbit, the planet earth comes close to the sun after a long time. The point at which the planet Earth passes closest to the sun is called perihelion, and the point furthest from the sun is called aphelion. When the earth is closer to the sun, it moves faster and receives more solar light for a short time. But the northern hemisphere did not get the sun’s direct rays at that time. So at that time, there was winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere. During the summer season in the northern hemisphere, the earth is far away from the sun.  The earth moves slowly and receives less solar light but for a long time. This ray falls the northern part directly and there was summer at that time and winter in the southern hemisphere.




     Rotational characteristic of the earth: The spinning of the earth around its own axis is called “rotation”. The earth takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds to complete one rotation. The earth's rotation around its axis results in the alternation of day and night. The axis has an angle of 23 and is perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s orbit. That means the earth is tilted on its axis. Because of this tilt changing the seasons. The earth’s rotation is affected by the tidal forces of the moon and sun. Because of the moon, the earth is slowing down at a rate of about 1 millisecond per year.


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