- #1
Wattever
- 38
- 0
I can't understand why the sun moves across the ecliptic :(
I've been searching for hours and I've found nothing more than "because of the Earth's revolution around the sun", so I'm assuming this is extremely obvious - but I can't understand it. I understand why the declination angle of the sun would change (because of the Earth's axial tilt together with its revolution) but I don't understand the horizontal motion, and I understand that if we consider the Earth not to be rotating the sun would appear to revolve around the Earth (so we wouldn't be able to see it for half of the year from a specific position) but since it is rotating, at each point along the Earth's orbit around the sun this specific point will be facing the sun at 24 hour intervals so the viewing angle should not be changed (if we ignore the difference in declination)! Can someone please explain this to me?
I've been searching for hours and I've found nothing more than "because of the Earth's revolution around the sun", so I'm assuming this is extremely obvious - but I can't understand it. I understand why the declination angle of the sun would change (because of the Earth's axial tilt together with its revolution) but I don't understand the horizontal motion, and I understand that if we consider the Earth not to be rotating the sun would appear to revolve around the Earth (so we wouldn't be able to see it for half of the year from a specific position) but since it is rotating, at each point along the Earth's orbit around the sun this specific point will be facing the sun at 24 hour intervals so the viewing angle should not be changed (if we ignore the difference in declination)! Can someone please explain this to me?