The Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars all rise in the east and set in the west. And that's because Earth spins -- toward the east. For a moment, let us ignore Earth's orbit around the Sun (as well as the Sun's and solar system's revolution around the center of the Galaxy, and even the Galaxy's journey through the universe).

(This may be easier to see if you set up two balls (using a light as the Sun) and make a model of the situation; place yourself on the Moon ball and you'll see what the Earth then looks like at any point in your orbit.) I say that it is about the same because there are some differences. For example, there are slightly different apparent sizes ...

Ask students where in the picture the Sun should be placed. Compared to the height of the tallest object in the drawing, how high should the Sun be drawn? Draw the Sun in the agreed upon location in the picture. Write the time of the observation on the Sun. Ask students if there is any way to tell the Sun's location when their eyes are closed.

This causes the Sun to rise in the west and move eastward across the sky. Return to the StarChild Main Page:

Venus revolves around the Sun in a circular orbit once every 225 Earth days. Venus rotates slowly on its axis in a clockwise direction, which is referred to as a "retrograde" rotation because it is the opposite of the seven other planets. A rotation takes 243 Earth days, so a Venusian day is longer than a Venusian year.

The Sun (and, of course, the rest of our solar system) is located near the Orion arm, between two major arms (Perseus and Sagittarius). The diameter of the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years and the Sun is located about 28,000 light-years from the Galactic Center. You can see a drawing of the Milky Way below which shows what our Galaxy ...

Due to Mercury's rotation and highly elliptical orbit, the Sun appears to rise briefly, set, and rise again before it travels westward across the sky. At sunset, the Sun appears to set, rise again briefly, and then set again.

When the Moon is exactly lined up with the Sun (as viewed from Earth), we experience an eclipse. As the Moon moves eastward away from the Sun in the sky, we see a bit more of the sunlit side of the Moon each night. A few days after new moon, we see a …

Most of the visible surface of the Sun has a temperature of about 5400 degrees C, but in a big sunspot the temperature can drop to about 4000 degrees C. Sunspots come in sizes between about 2500 km and about 50,000 km. So while they are quite large, they are still much smaller than the Sun itself, which has a diameter of 1,392,000 km.

The Moon does not generate any light of its own. So the lit part of the Moon always points toward the Sun. Now as you can see in the diagram, as the Earth travels aroound the Sun, the tilt of the Earth on its axis sometimes points the northern hemisphere toward the Sun and sometimes points the southern hemisphere toward the Sun. This is why we ...