How the Solar System Actually Moves

August 27, 2015 at 7:29 pm | Posted in Science, Space | 6 Comments
Tags: orbits, planets, spiral, sun

You may have seen those animations of the planets circling the sun. Maybe even one of those mechanical devices illustrating it. However, this leaves us with the erroneous impression that the sun is standing still.

As I noted on Quite Enough, “the sun is moving at about 810,000 kph. The earth is not orbiting, it’s spiralling through space, following the sun. We’re not only matching the suns speed to keep up, but spinning and going around as well. So we’re going even faster…” We also never return to the same point in space in our annual orbit.

I saw a decent animation of the process but it had the plane of the ecliptic (planetary orbits) perpendicular to the sun’s movement, which is incorrect. This one is more accurate. However, it’s also worth noting that the sun is not moving in a straight line either. We’re moving relative to other area stars, and orbiting the galaxy which is moving with our galactic cluster, and so forth.

https://i.imgur.com/rLr8Swh.mp4
David

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Another excellent example of this view is here – Earth_Is_Not_Orbiting_The_Sun.mp4

“The solar system’s motion thru space by The Resonance Project / Nassim Haramein”

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Comment by Bill Allen— November 1, 2015 #

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Hi Bill
The advantage of your clip is that it shows the transition of perspectives. However it also has text that is inaccurate and the animation shows the planets orbital plane perpendicular to the suns path, which it’s not. That’s why I posted the above – the scale isn’t accurate but the flow is much more so.

I mentioned the issue in the article.

The clip is also not from the Resonance Project but rather is parts assembled from several sources of low quality and labeled prominently with another logo. I’ve always found it better to get content from the source as this kind of thing is prone to be distorted from the original intent.

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Comment by David B— November 1, 2015 #

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Here’s another clip showing various aspects of the earths orbit relative to the sun. All of these dynamics are on top of the motion featured in the article.

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Comment by David B— November 16, 2016 #

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And further, another perspective on precession.

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Comment by David B— November 16, 2016 #

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[…] place in the universe and the nature of space around us. I’ve posted on The Ultra Deep Field, How Our Solar System Actually Moves, Lanikea: Our Home Supercluster, Across the Universe, Quite Enough (on scale), and […]

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Pingback by How Many Stars Are There? | For Now— October 9, 2017 #

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An article discussing the issues with some depictions of this motion, like vortex vs helical.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/04/vortex_motion_viral_video_showing_sun_s_motion_through_galaxy_is_wrong.html

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Comment by David B— September 13, 2018 #

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