What IS the Ecliptic?
I was looking at your site. Would you possibly mind helping understand something? I don’t understand the definition of the ecliptic. Is it the daily motion across the sky or is it the path of gradual shift in position over the course of the year? Reply It is neither. It is the flat plane of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Draw in your mind a line from Earth to the Sun. As the Earth orbits the Sun (in one year), Earth and Sun are always at opposite ends of that line. So seen from Earth, the Sun moves in the plane of the ecliptic, too, and its path among the stars is also in the ecliptic. The line traced by that path among the stars is ALSO called the ecliptic, and is so labeled on star charts. The 12 constellations along this path are the famous “zodiac” and each corresponds to a month. But there is more!
I was looking at your site. Would you possibly mind helping understand something? I don’t understand the definition of the ecliptic. Is it the daily motion across the sky or is it the path of gradual shift in position over the course of the year? Reply It is neither. It is the flat plane of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Draw in your mind a line from Earth to the Sun. As the Earth orbits the Sun (in one year), Earth and Sun are always at opposite ends of that line. So seen from Earth, the Sun moves in the plane of the ecliptic, too, and its path among the stars is also in the ecliptic. The line traced by that path among the stars is ALSO called the ecliptic, and is so labeled on star charts. The 12 constellations along this path are the famous “zodiac” and each corresponds to a month. But there is more! The ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM is flat, and the planes of the orbits of all major planets (and of our Moon, too) are all near the ecliptic, usually just a few degrees off. So to the ca
