Who orbits who?

Question

i know the answer to this one but i heard there are people who don't. ( i mean come on!!!! 20th century!!!! does copernicus say anything to you or maybe galilei?)...so my queastion is this.....do you know who orbits who? doaes the sun orbit us or do we orbit the sun?

Answer 1

earth orbits sun

sun (solar system) orbits centre of Milky Way galaxy

Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy and other nearby galaxies are gravitationally bound together to form a cluster of galaxies which orbit the largest galaxy

clusters of galaxies are in turn bound together by gravitational forces to form super clusters which also orbit the largest cluster...and it ends there

Answer 2

I've always been a fan of the Tychonic system, a delightful compromise with the planets moving around the Sun, and the Sun moving around the Earth. :)

Answer 3

according to mythology, aka rubbish, the sun orbits the earth. according to science, fact, the earth orbits the sun. the earth orbits the sun because the sun has more gravitational pull than the earth, and therefore the earth falls into the sun's orbit, and not visa versa. on earth we get the impression that the sun revolves around us, but its actually the other way around.

Answer 4

if you know then stop asking dumb questions

Answer 5

ok here it the sun.(imagine it)....it is in the middle. around it, there are different size of circles drawn(the further, the bigger), each circle is the path of a planet. So they each move round and round the sun at certain speed. Now stones(forgot the proper name) like the moon are present for alsmost each planet. this moon rotates around the planet.

So basicaly, moons turn around planets while planets turn around sun...

Hope it is clear enough!

Answer 6

No one orbits anyone.  The word "who" implies people, persons, living things.  The planets are not people, they are not persons, they are not living things.

Although many early cosmologists such as Aristarchus speculated about the motion of the Earth around a stationary Sun, it was not until the 16th century that Copernicus presented a fully predictive mathematical model of a heliocentric system, which was later elaborated by Kepler and defended by Galileo.

The Earth, all the other planets, the comets, and asteroids all orbit the sun.  The moon orbits the Earth.

Answer 7

its OBVIOUS that the sun orbits the earth once a day-- havent you ever gone outside and looked at it?    its in the east in morning and in the west at night and this is a direct result of the suns orbit

Answer 8

Accoring to Einstein's principle of relativity, any point can be considered stationary and all other objects in motion with respect to the assumed stationary point.

Answer 9

Labsci is right, they orbit a common center of gravity, which happens to be VERY close to the center of the Sun.  The Earth/Moon system orbits around a common center of gravity that is in the Earth.  If Phobos & Diemos orbit around each other instead of Mars, (they are the moons of Mars,) then they would look like two balls circling around each other without the string between them, since thay are roughly the same MASS!  The centers of gravity between two objects is based on mass, not size.  You can have two celestrial bodies, one made of iron/nickel and one made of rock.  To have the same mass, the one made of rock has to be bigger in size, because the one made of metal is more dense. Therefore the center of gravity will be closer ot the more massive object, and the rotation around each other would look like a elongated wobble.

Hope this helps, or did I confuse you even more???

Answer 10

While we are all thought at school Earth circles the sun this is strictly speaking only one part of the truth.

In mechanics (and physics) it is perfectly valid to choose Earth as the origin for coordinate system. If we do choose it (and we are entitled to do so) the sun circles the Earth.  : )

One bad thing about such a choice is that planet's trajectories are really hard to describe.

One good thing about it is that if you ever take the time to step outside and observe the Sun you will see its painfully obvious that it circles around us.

So the answer to your question "who orbits who" is:

It depends on the observer.

Answer 11

Technically, what is going on is that the Earth, Sun and all the planets are orbiting around the center of mass of the solar system. This is actually how planets orbiting other stars are often detected, by searching for the motion of the stars they orbit that is caused by the fact that the star is orbiting the center of mass of the system, causing it to wobble on the sky.

Answer 12

all the planets and celestial bodies in our solar system orbit the sun.

Answer 13

The sun is sometimes as far as 742,000 km from the center of mass of the solar system (96,000 km outside its surface).  The exact distance depends on the position of the planets, especially Jupiter and Saturn.

As for who orbits who:  neither, or both.  The equations of motion are simplest if you use the center of mass, but you can use any center you want, and the equations are only twice as complicated at most.   Unless you are doing some *very* high accuracy work, in which case the equations are complicated no matter what center you use.  Professional equations have about 15 terms in them for _each_ planet, the sun, moon, and a lot of asteroids.

If your accuracy is worst than about 750,000 km, then you can pick the sun for the center for your "elliptical" orbits.   That's about 0.5% of the Earth-Sun distance, and is good enough for high-school calculations.

Answer 14

All the planets, orbit the Sun! Including us..

Answer 15

Neither, both the Sun and the Earth orbit around a common centre of gravity, which just happens to be very close to the centre of the Sun.

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