Questions tagged [rotation]

Questions regarding the action of or an object rotating along an axis.

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Galactic rotation curves data samples: how to get them?

I am aiming to introduce data Science to my High-School students and I thought about giving to them data taken from galactic rotation curves (spiral galaxies at the moment) to stude the flatness of ...
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Moonrise and Moonset time in Sydney vs Perth

I'm very confused with multiple moonrise and moonset times across Australia. For Example (According to https://timeanddate.com) Moonrise in Sydney on 22 Mar 2023 is at AEST 7:09AM which is going to ...
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Can a tidally locked planet sustain a magnetic field

The vast majority of stars in the Galaxy, and probably the universe, are red dwarfs. The habitable zones of these stars are very close to the stars themselves, often within what would be Mercury’s ...
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Convert from magnetic coordinates to true coordinates

I am working with the IGRF (International Geomagnetic Reference Field) model and from a journal article found here, I am able to compute the earth's magnetic field at any point in spherical ...
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Does the slowing of the spin of the Earth's core result in more coronal mass ejections?

Some recent studies indicate that the slowing of the spin of the Earth's core happens on a periodic basis, such as when it slowed 50 years ago in the 1970s and 80s. Would this slowing of the inner ...
4 votes
1 answer
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What is the rotational speed of Sagittarius A*?

Sagittarius A* is the Milky Way's own supermassive black hole. Up till recently, I used to think that Sagittarius A* was a static black hole, i.e. It had no rotational speed at all. But after doing a ...
2 votes
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Calculation of intersection point Q of planetary equator with ICRF equator for other planets

I'm converting the W for each planet in this IAU report into Celestia's MeridianAngle, which is converted like this: $$ \textrm{MeridianAngle}=W-Q $$ Where Q is the point where the planet's equator ...
3 votes
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What is the v sin i parameter?

In the August 2021 preprint by WeiJia Sun et al. Exploring the stellar rotation of early-type stars in the LAMOST Medium-Resolution Survey. II. Statistics there is histogram plot with the caption: v ...
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What was this "light" that looked like a star moving repeating from point A to B for about 5 mins [duplicate]

I was looking in the sky one night about 9:45. There was what looked to be a shooting star but much slower and brighter more like a satellite. It was moving (from standing on earth) it looked like a ...
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Which of the exoplanets are having retrograde rotation?

By exoplanet, I mean planets outside of our solar system(i.e., planets in other solar systems). If we talk about our solar system, then Venus, Uranus, and Pluto have retrograde rotation. Most of the ...
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4 answers
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Do planets lose energy while rotating?

When a planet rotates/spins, is it true that the planet loses energy? If this is true, then where does this energy lost by the planet go? My confusion may be in the basic understanding of the ...
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How long would it take for a planet captured by a red dwarf to become tidally-locked if it started out rotating retrograde?

So say for the sake of argument that we have a red dwarf orbiting a G of K-class star. An Earth-sized planet forms, maybe at one of the dwarf star's Lagrange points to its primary, and eventually ...
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How scientists find the direction of rotation of planets?

How do we know that Mercury, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune rotate counterclockwise and Venus, Uranus, and Pluto rotate clockwise? How do scientists determine the direction of rotation of ...
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Does the Sun shift periodically between prograde and retrograde rotation about its axis?

Prograde means rotating in the same direction in which most of the planets in our solar system rotate, which is counterclockwise, and retrograde rotation means the opposite, i.e., clockwise rotation. ...
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Why do the Sun and gas planets rotate faster at equator than at poles?

From this site, it states that: The Sun spins faster at its equator than at its poles. I have also read somewhere that the gas giants (gaseous planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) also ...
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How much would you weigh at the equator of the fastest spinning pulsar?

Assuming you have a mass of 70 kg, what would your weight be on the equator of PSR J1748−2446ad?
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What can we learn from the rotation data of a star?

Knowing the speed of a star's surface rotation gives us what data and information. For example, if it is a big star, is it possible to measure distance using the doppler effect? Or can we calculate ...
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How to model galactic rotation curves?

I have R (kpc)- distance from galactic center and v(km/s) rotational speed at that distance. I was thinking of creating a simple model comprising of 3 terms 1 for Keplerian component another for rigid ...
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Where can I find galaxy rotational data?

I want to do a small project of generating rotational curves for different galaxies, and need data for some prominent stars in other galaxies (data needed: distance from center, rotational velocity) ...
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Rotation direction of Pulsars

Pulsars are rotating neutron stars observed to have pulses of radiation at very regular intervals that typically range from milliseconds to seconds. It has a very strong magnetic fields which funnel ...
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What else can we learn from a Foucault pendulum? Have they ever been used to determine anything more than that the Earth rotates on its axis?

Background Each semester we have to make up projects for each course. This semester I took Cosmology and Astrophysics and we covered a vast amount of topics, from luminosity of stars to Einstein's ...
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Earth’s rotation speed vs rate of lunar cycle

Hypothetical Question If the earth’s rotation slowed down to align to the lunar cycle so that the orbital period began and ended at the same lunar phase, what other things would result? For example, ...
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Does Earth's rotation cause any structural changes in the Earth? [closed]

I tried searching for this and while all results talks about changes of day and night, impact on direction of wind, cyclones, etc, they do not say whether it causes any structural changes in the long ...
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Why would a freezing liquid layer accelerate a rocky body's rotation?

Titan, whose orbital period is 382 hours, is tidally locked, like all round moons in the Solar System. But Jonathan I. Lunine said of Titan: One thing that Titan could not have done during its ...
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Could a magnetosphere be created for Venus by recreated by spinning-up the planet to a 24 hour day?

If Venus in it is current state, started rotating at the same rate as Earths 24hrs rotation, would it develop a magnetic field of roughly the same strength as Earth's? If so, would that help in any ...
17 votes
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If planets are ellipsoids why don't we have 3 diameters?

We know that each ellipsoid has 3 diameters named $2a$, $2b$, and $2c$. The Earth and all planets, in general, are ellipsoids (Saturn is the best example because it's the most oblate planet in the ...
4 votes
1 answer
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The orbital period of Jupiter and Europa billions of years later

We know that the Sun gets so big billions of years later and the Earth will get destroyed. What will the orbital period of Jupiter (Sun-Jupiter system) and its moon Europa (Jupiter-Europa system) be ...
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Why does a timelapse video of a stationary Milky Way make the horizon appear to move from horizontal to vertical?

In this video, with a rotating camera keeping the Milky Way 'stationary,' the horizon appears to transition form horizontal to nearly vertical. I understand the Earth ...
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1 answer
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What rotational speed would Mercury need to have to achieve a temperature comfortable for humans

I wondered what rotational speed would Mercury need to have to achieve a temperature comfortable to humans, let's say 20 °C. EDIT: My idea was that if Mercury is so cold on the night side and so hot ...
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Is there any difference between tidal locking and synchronous rotation?

I'm trying to understand more about orbital mechanics, and I'm encountering a few terms which I'm not sure if they are exactly the same. The two terms are Tidal Locking and Synchronous Rotation. To my ...
2 votes
6 answers
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Am I looking at the moon upside down here in the US?

This may be a very basic question, but I just learned that the moon orbits around the earth counterclockwise. I always thought the earth and the moon shared the rotation and orbit direction. Since the ...
2 votes
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Would tidally locked Earth-like exoplanets necessarily have hot pole/cold pole atmospheric circulation?

A tidally locked planet orbiting a red dwarf star in its habitable zone would have a rotational period equal to its orbital period, on the order of days or weeks. Given a thick enough atmosphere ...
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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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1 vote
1 answer
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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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1 vote
3 answers
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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 ...
2 votes
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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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