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Axial tilt of eight planets and two dwarf planets, Ceres and Pluto All four of the innermost, rocky planets of the Solar System may have had large variations of their obliquity in the past. Since obliquity is the angle between the axis of rotation and the direction perpendicular to the orbital plane, it changes as the orbital plane changes due ...
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These effects are caused by a combination of the Earth's axial tilt and its revolution around the Sun. The direction of the Earth's axial tilt, as well as its angle relative to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, remains very nearly constant over the course of a year (both change very slowly over long time periods).
The angle between the ecliptic and the equatorial plane is called variously the axial tilt, the obliquity, or the inclination of the ecliptic, and it is conventionally denoted by i. The latitude of the tropical circles is equal to i and the latitude of the polar circles is its complement (90° - i).
English: Relationship between Earth's axial tilt (ε) to the tropical and polar circles. The SVG file uses CSS animation with feDisplacementMap. The orthographic projection was rendered from the NASA Blue Marble Next Generation.
Therefore, the latitudes noted above are calculated by averaging values of tilt observed over many years. The axial tilt also exhibits long-term variations as described in the reference article (a difference of 1 second of arc (″) in the tilt is equivalent to a change of about 31 metres north or south in the positions of the polar circles on ...
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The Earth's axial tilt has additional shorter-term variations due to nutation, of which the main term, with a period of 18.6 years, has an amplitude of 9.2″ (corresponding to almost 300 m north and south). [4] There are many smaller terms, resulting in varying daily shifts of some metres in any direction.