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The Kuiper belt is a ring of small icy worlds, similar to the asteroid belt but far larger, extending from Neptune's orbit at 30 AU out to about 55 AU from the Sun. [145] Much in the same way that Jupiter's gravity dominates the asteroid belt, Neptune's gravity dominates the Kuiper belt. Over the age of the Solar System, certain regions of the ...
That is, they all have prograde rotation relative to the Sun except those of Uranus. If there is a collision, material could be ejected in any direction and coalesce into either prograde or retrograde moons, which may be the case for the moons of dwarf planet Haumea, although Haumea's rotation direction is not known. [15]
All other planetary bodies in the Solar System also appear to periodically switch direction as they cross Earth's sky. Though all stars and planets appear to move from east to west on a nightly basis in response to the rotation of Earth, the outer planets generally drift slowly eastward relative to the stars.
The poles of astronomical bodies are determined based on their axis of rotation in relation to the celestial poles of the celestial sphere. Astronomical bodies include stars, planets, dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies such as comets and minor planets (e.g., asteroids), as well as natural satellites and minor-planet moons.
The South Pole is the other point where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface, in Antarctica. Earth rotates once in about 24 hours with respect to the Sun, but once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds with respect to other distant stars . Earth's rotation is slowing slightly with time; thus, a day was shorter in the past.
Neptune was discovered in 1846 and is located 30 times farther from the sun than Earth. The planet's 164-year orbit takes it through some of the darkest and most remote regions of the outer solar ...
Rotation period with respect to distant stars, the sidereal rotation period (compared to Earth's mean Solar days) Synodic rotation period (mean Solar day) Apparent rotational period viewed from Earth Sun [i] 25.379995 days (Carrington rotation) 35 days (high latitude) 25 d 9 h 7 m 11.6 s 35 d ~28 days (equatorial) [2] Mercury: 58.6462 days [3 ...
For planetographic longitude, west longitudes (i.e., longitudes measured positively to the west) are used when the rotation is prograde, and east longitudes (i.e., longitudes measured positively to the east) when the rotation is retrograde. In simpler terms, imagine a distant, non-orbiting observer viewing a planet as it rotates.