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  2. Galactic year - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_year

    The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Sun to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. [1] One galactic year is approximately 225 million Earth years. [2]

  3. Orbital period - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_period

    The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy , it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun , moons orbiting planets, exoplanets orbiting other stars , or binary stars .

  4. Oort constants - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_constants

    Figure 1: Geometry of the Oort constants derivation, with a field star close to the Sun in the midplane of the Galaxy. Consider a star in the midplane of the Galactic disk with Galactic longitude at a distance from the Sun. Assume that both the star and the Sun have circular orbits around the center of the Galaxy at radii of and from the Galactic Center and rotational velocities of and ...

  5. Sun-synchronous orbit - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit

    An orbit will be Sun-synchronous when the precession rate ρ = ⁠ dΩ / dt ⁠ equals the mean motion of the Earth about the Sun n E, which is 360° per sidereal year (1.990 968 71 × 10 −7 rad/s), so we must set n E = ⁠ ΔΩ E / T E ⁠ = ρ = ⁠ ΔΩ / T ⁠, where T E is the Earth orbital period, while T is the period of the spacecraft ...

  6. Milky Way - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way

    The apex of the Sun's way, or the solar apex, is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's Galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. The Sun's orbit about the Milky Way is ...

  7. Astronomical coordinate systems - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_coordinate...

    The horizontal, or altitude-azimuth, system is based on the position of the observer on Earth, which revolves around its own axis once per sidereal day (23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds) in relation to the star background. The positioning of a celestial object by the horizontal system varies with time, but is a useful coordinate system ...

  8. Mean anomaly - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_anomaly

    The classical method of finding the position of an object in an elliptical orbit from a set of orbital elements is to calculate the mean anomaly by this equation, and then to solve Kepler's equation for the eccentric anomaly. Define ϖ as the longitude of the pericenter, the angular distance of the pericenter from a reference direction.

  9. Ecliptic - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic

    The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun throughout the course of a year. [5] Because Earth takes one year to orbit the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun takes one year to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic. With slightly more than 365 days in one year, the Sun moves a little less than 1° eastward [6] every day.