Can you explain how the Sun follows the ecliptic and also the analemma?
One of these is a path in the celestial sphere, and the other is a path in the local sky. The ecliptic is the path of the Sun on the celestial sphere, the imaginary sphere that rotates around the Earth once per day. The Sun is of course going around the local sky every day along with the celestial sphere, but it also slowly moves around the celestial sphere, once per year, because of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. The analemma is another thing altogether (we didn’t discuss it in class). This describes the figure 8 shape you get when you trace the position of the Sun at the same time each day in the local sky. Note that the celestial sphere looks different at the same time of day, at different times of the year!
