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jojo wrote:
Thanks for setting me straight on that! What is the tilt? 32 degrees? wow, a little closer or further away and this planet would be intolerable. 23.5 degree tilt - that which you see in standard Earth globes in school or the library. And we actually do get a little closer and a little farther from the Sun over the period of one year - closer in January and farthest in July. That elliptical nature of our orbit and that of Mars is why this recent opposition was so close. The orbits are not nested ellipses of the same eccentricity, though they are nearly circular (which is why they are portrayed that way in textbooks and science programs. We just passed our far point from the Sun this past July (first week), while Mars was approaching its near point - thus, we are closer to it than two years ago when the same was not true. Did I read somewhere that because of the elliptical orbits of Neptune and Pluto that they actually change places in their relationship to the sun? meaning, sometimes Pluto is no the farthest planet? Yes, so that from 1979 to 1999, Pluto was closer to the Sun than Neptune. |
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