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All eight planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in the direction of the Sun's rotation, which is counterclockwise when viewed from above the Sun's north pole. Six of the planets also rotate about their axis in this same direction. The exceptions – the planets with retrograde rotation – are Venus and Uranus.
The more distant planets retrograde more frequently, as they do not move as much in their orbits while Earth completes an orbit itself. The retrograde motion of a hypothetical extremely distant (and nearly non-moving) planet would take place during a half-year, with the planet's apparent yearly motion being reduced to a parallax ellipse.
A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit. The elliptical orbits of planets were indicated by calculations of the orbit of Mars.
WASP-17b is thought to have a retrograde orbit (with a sky-projected inclination of the orbit normal against the stellar spin axis of about 149°, [11] not to be confused with the line-of-sight inclination of the orbit, given in the table, which is near 90° for all transiting planets), which would make it the first planet discovered to have such an orbital motion.
All celestial objects – planets, stars , galaxies, black holes – spin. [1] [2] [3] The boundaries of a Kerr black hole relevant to astrophysics. Note that there are no physical "surfaces" as such. The boundaries are mathematical surfaces, or sets of points in spacetime, relevant to analysis of the black hole's properties and interactions.
Stars and planets rotate in the first place because conservation of angular momentum turns random drifting of parts of the molecular cloud that they form from into rotating motion as they coalesce. Given this average rotation of the whole body, internal differential rotation is caused by convection in stars which is a movement of mass, due to ...
Diagram of modern conception of the Counter-Earth, a planet in the same orbit as the Earth, but 180° out of phase. Philolaus's ideas were all eventually superseded by the modern realization that a spherical Earth rotating on its own axis was one of several spherical planets following the laws of gravity and revolving around a much larger Sun ...
A gravity assist, gravity assist maneuver, swing-by, or generally a gravitational slingshot in orbital mechanics, is a type of spaceflight flyby which makes use of the relative movement (e.g. orbit around the Sun) and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically to save propellant and reduce expense.