Questions tagged [rotation]
Questions regarding the action of or an object rotating along an axis.
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Has Altair flung off its planets by rotation?
This might be a dumb question, but would it be possible that during the star Altair's formation, the centrifugal forces became so large that its planets were flung away into space?
Or could a passing ...
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What is the exact reason for the Sun's differential rotation to occur?
The following is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article for "Differential Rotation":
Differential rotation is seen when different parts of a rotating
object move with different angular ...
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Solar Rotation Varies with Latitude. Effects?
From the Wikipedia article of "Solar Rotation":
Solar rotation varies with latitude. The Sun is not a solid body, but is composed of a gaseous plasma. Different latitudes rotate at ...
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Axial Tilt One or Two Angles
Why is the axial tilt of a planet expressed as a single angle when two angles are necessary to specify a point on a sphere? Imagine if the Earth’s axial tilt were 90 degrees, then the axis of rotation ...
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Do relativistically measured rotation speeds (Special Relativity) change planetary mass slightly through Lorentz transformation?
Thanks @ConnorGarcia for your Answer. Avoiding 'Tidal Locking' for now - the rotational angular momentum Lrot is 10,000,000 times smaller, so negligible, but could it still be a factor in eccentricity?...
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Is the 'spin' of Earth and the 'spin' of Mars a significant contribution to their angular momentum?
Is the 'spin' of Earth and the 'spin' of Mars taken into account as a contribution to the conservation of angular momentum? (and a contribution to the increasing/decreasing eccentricity?) Or - is the ...
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Can you compute the solar day?
For a given planet, if you know the sidereal rotation period and the sidereal revolution period, can you compute the length of one solar day?
For instance, for Earth, if you know one rotation is ...
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Special case of rotation period
Rotation period is either prograde, like the Earth, or retrograde, like Venus. How likely is it for a body orbiting its parent object (either a planet around a star or a moon around a planet) to have ...
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If a black hole is spinning, does its singularity have a new name and what is the name? [duplicate]
Think of a spinning black hole. (Kerr black hole)
Every black hole has a point of infinite density, called a singularity.
When a singularity is spinning, does it have a different name?
But when a ...
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Can the pebbles growth model be applied to the rotations of planetary systems? [duplicate]
I've just read the University of Amsterdam 2019 News item Pebbles determine the direction in which planets rotate (which links to R.G.Visser et al (2020) Spinning up planetary bodies by pebble ...
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When will Mercury have rotated an extra round around its axis?
It is well known that Mercury orbits slightly differently from a pure Newtonian orbit. Every year a slight deviation is found.
Now if we observe a lot of these orbits then Mercury should at one point ...
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Are there non-rotating objects in the universe?
All celestial bodies I can think of rotate. The sun, the planets, the moon, the galaxies, clusters of galaxies, the supermassive black hole at the center if the Milky Way, accretion discs, etc. It ...
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How are constellations intact if the stars are rotating around galactic nuclei?
From what I understood, the Milky Way (or stars in the Milky Way) doesn't rotate like a collection of points in a disc due to the presence of some invisible matter. In theory, the angular velocities ...
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App Stellarium and hourly wobbling motion of Neptune
In Stellarium when I zoom in on Neptune to be able to see your daily rotation. I select Neptune, center it (space bar) and then make increments of one solar hour (command +). I notice that the axis ...
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Does precession affect this measurement?
I don't have the astronomy vocabulary to ask this question. You can find a better picture at https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/axial-tilt-obliquity.html.
I want to know if the distance between ...
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Converting Invariable plane to J2000 ecliptic
I've been following the answer given by Mike G here: How to calculate the orientation of planets at current epoch to get planets to have the correct orientation in my program, but all the angles are ...
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How galactic density falls using Oort constants
I am given the observations that Oort constants $A$ and $B$ are, respectively: $14.5 \text{km s}^{-1} \text{kpc}^{-1}$ and $-12 \text{km s}^{-1} \text{kpc}^{-1}$. From these, I am supposed to conclude ...
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How would one estimate the rotation period of a star from its spectrum?
The figure is shown; the measurements were taken on two consecutive observing nights. The Ordinate is the flux normalized to continuum and the abscissa is the wavelength scale. You can see the "...
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can i use heliocentric velocity as a rotation speed? [closed]
In the research of the galaxies, does heliocentric velocity involves space's expanding velocity? and can i use heliocentric velocity by galaxy's rotation speed?
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Astrophysical black holes deviating from Kerr black holes?
Rotating black holes are formed due to the gravitational collapse of massive spinning objects. And, it is generally believed that Kerr black hole solutions are valid for the empty space outside of the ...
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How is it possible for a collision to be responsible for Uranus's axial tilt?
I realize that the collision explanation is in any case highly (purely?) speculative, but I'm curious how it would work. If Uranus is a ball of gas, why wouldn't any colliding object just pass ...
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Accelerations on the Moon due to its orbit and its spin
A gyroscope is placed on the equator of the Moon. It detects among others 2 accelerations: one due to the orbit and one due to the spin. What is the module of the second one compared to the first one?
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How was the axial tilt of planets measured?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt#Solar_System_bodies gives the axial tilt of all planets with two decimal precision, but how and when were they measured so precisely ?
I guess it's "easy&...
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How fast do the poles of Jupiter and Saturn precess?
As Jupiter and Saturn have very fast rotation periods, about 10 and 11 hours, respectively, I am assuming that their poles will precess much faster then Earth. Since Earth's poles precess every 26000 ...
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Do some comets spin? If so, how fast?
The GIF below is copied from my question earlier What might a CN filter be in the context of comet watching? Is it showing dust, or gas, or something else? where I'd said:
In this post on the website ...
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Will there be any more planets come into our solar system and make it their "home"?
Could we have more planets come into our system and get trapped by our suns gravitational field and rotate?
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Will Earth rotate backwards in the future?
Hello recently I heave heard the earth will eventually start rotating in the opposite direction (ie sunrise from the west) . I am not sure if this is true, but a lot of sites are claiming it to be ...
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Calculating the Solar Day of an Exoplanet?
I am currently in the process of compiling a list of stars and their planets, given the information in the European Star Catalogue found here, but I'm struggling to find out how to calculate a planets ...
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What is the YORP effect exactly? Is it just the non-central component of the Yarkovsky effect?
This answer to Where have all the Vulcanoids gone? links to the aptly-titled The YORP Effect Can Efficiently Destroy 100 Kilometer Planetesimals At The Inner Edge Of The Solar System which says in ...
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Is a three body gravitating system doomed to collapse?
Suppose we have two gravitating bodies, which are rotating around each other. They are bodies and are affected by deformation caused by tidal forces. Moving tidal waves suck energy from the axial ...
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Are there any bodies in the solar system whose rotation is almost tidally locked or barely tidally locked?
The Moon's rotation is firmly tidally locked to the Earth and the Earth's rotation is firmly tidally unlocked with respect to the Moon. I gather that Mercury's rotation is tidally locked in a 3:2 ...
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Do the axes of rotation of most stars in the Milky Way align reasonably closely with the axis of galactic rotation?
The axis of rotation of the Solar System makes a large angle of about 60 degrees relative to the axis of rotation of the Milky Way. That seems unusual - for example, most of the bodies within the ...
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Third rotational angle in equatorial coordinates
Right ascension and declination identify an object's position in the sky, but if we are looking at something through a telescope, there is a third angle of interest, namely how our view is rotated ...
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What should be the "poles" for irregular shaped bodies?
Continuation of: What is the definition of a "pole" of a celestial body?
From uhoh's answer, we can conclude that a distinct bodies should have a center of mass. If the body is spherical, ...
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What is the definition of a "pole" of a celestial body?
What is the definition of a "pole" of a celestial body?
Earth's pole is defined as it's rotational pole. The North and South Poles are the two points on Earth where its axis of rotation ...
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Is there an API to obtain Solar System body axial tilt data?
I would like to get information about rotation period and axial tilt for main Solar System bodies and major moons, over time.
Is there an API availabe for this?
I've checked JPL's Horizons API and ...
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By how much does Haumea's fast rotation affect its surface gravity?
The equation for surface gravity is $\frac{GM}{r^2}$ but I'm not sure how to include the effects from its rotation.
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Does tidal locking also slowly reduce the orbiting body's axial angle?
The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, and it has an axial angle of 6.687 degrees relative to its orbital plane. I'd like to know: did the Moon start out with a higher axial angle?
In other words, ...
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Why is the sunset at different times at the same longitude at equinox?
I happen to live in two places that are literally at the same longitude but several thousand kilometers apart from each other (~47°N and ~68°N). It's just a few days until equinox - and I assumed that ...
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Why both sunrise and sunset use the position of the sun's upper limb?
It is my understanding, that astronomical moments of both rise and set use the relative position of background object's upper limb to the foreground object's horizon.
When were these definitions ...
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Do retrograde spin-orbit resonances exist?
The end state of rotation of an initially fast-spinning prograde terrestrial planet (in the absence of additional forcings such as "thermal tides" in an atmosphere, e.g. Venus) is a spin-...
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Kinetic energy and galaxy arm rotation rate
The higher than expected rotational velocity of stars and gas clouds in the outskirts of galaxies is explained today by invoking dark matter that supplies not only the additional gravitational mass ...
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Has the computed change of the axial tilt ever been measured?
Earth, the 3rd planet from the Sun, sometimes faces earthquakes and seaquakes that are so strong that they reportedly change the axial tilt and/or the rotation velocity. These changes are merely ...
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How can black holes spin if they're singularities? [duplicate]
How can black holes spin if the event horizon isn't a surface but just the border between where light can escape and where it can't? A black hole is assumed to be a singularity or the "entrance&...
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1answer
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As the Moon and the Earth are predicted to get into tidal lock, how slow would the Earth rotate?
This answer to Will the Earth ever be tidally locked to the Moon? supports the widely held thinking that during the Sun's red giant phase or later the Earth and the Moon should be tidally locked to ...
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How to understand exactly why gravity darkening happens on rotating stars?
Phys.org's TESS delivers new insights into an ultrahot world links to KELT-9 b's Asymmetric TESS Transit Caused by Rapid Stellar Rotation and Spin–Orbit Misalignment (readable in arXiv)
The assymetric ...
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Isn't it absurdly unlikely that our Moon would constantly be "facing" us? [duplicate]
I never thought about this until recently, but our Moon is constantly rotating in such a way that it happens to perfectly be "looking at us" at all times. That sounds incredibly unlikely to ...
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How many times has the Milky Way rotated?
I would think that is a highly naive question, but I still ask it.
Given current experimentally discovered numbers:
the Milky Way galaxy is ~13-14 billion years old
At the galactic radius where our ...
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Rotating observer plane inside celestial sphere with a given coordinates, time and date [duplicate]
I have plotted stars around the surface of a celestial sphere. At the centre of this sphere, I have a brown plane which is the land. This plane can be rotated in the x,y and z axis.
When x,y,z ...
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Why does Saturn have a more prominent equatorial bulge and higher flattening ratio than Jupiter despite rotating slower?
It is my understanding that a planet's equatorial bulge is caused by the centrifugal force produced by its rotation, and the faster a planet rotates the bigger the bulge and flattening ratio of a ...