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Orbital inclination —the Moon's orbit is inclined by 5.14° to the ecliptic. This shows the specific configuration at major northern lunistice. At such times, the Earth's north pole is toward the Moon and the Moon is north of the ecliptic. The mean inclination of the lunar orbit to the ecliptic plane is 5.145°.
t. e. Orbital mechanics or astrodynamics is the application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to the practical problems concerning the motion of rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft. The motion of these objects is usually calculated from Newton's laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation.
Orbital plane. An orbital plane as viewed relative to a plane of reference. An orbital plane can also be seen in relative to conic sections, in which the orbital path is defined as the intersection between a plane and a cone. Parabolic (1) and hyperbolic (3) orbits are escape orbits, whereas elliptical and circular orbits (2) are captive.
A montage of Jupiter and its four largest moons (distance and sizes not to scale) There are 95 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 5 February 2024. [1] [note 1] This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that were only briefly captured by telescopes. [4]
Lunar precession is a term used for three different precession motions related to the Moon. First, it can refer to change in orientation of the lunar rotational axis with respect to a reference plane, following the normal rules of precession followed by spinning objects. In addition, the orbit of the Moon undergoes two important types of ...
Orbital inclination and rotation. When the Moon is 5.14° north of the ecliptic, its north pole is tilted 6.68° away from the Earth. The orientation of the plane containing the vectors normal to the orbits and the Moon's rotational axis rotates 360° with a period of about 18.6 years, whereas the Earth's axis precesses with a period of around 26,000 years, so the line-up of this illustration ...
Lunar node. The lunar nodes are the two points where the Moon's orbital path crosses the ecliptic, the Sun's apparent yearly path on the celestial sphere. A lunar node is either of the two orbital nodes of the Moon, that is, the two points at which the orbit of the Moon intersects the ecliptic. The ascending (or north) node is where the Moon ...
Axial parallelism is widely observed in astronomy. For example, the axial parallelism of the Moon's orbital plane [8] is a key factor in the phenomenon of eclipses. The Moon's orbital axis precesses a full circle during the 18 year, 10 day saros cycle. When the Moon's orbital tilt is aligned with the ecliptic tilt, it is 29 degrees from the ...