Apparent Movement of the Sun

Earth and Sun

As Earth moves around the Sun, it also spins. Rotation is the act of spinning.

The dotted line between the North Pole and the South Pole is Earth's axis. An axis is a real or imaginary line that an object spins around. Every day, Earth completes one rotation. One rotation takes 24 hours.

As Earth rotates, you see different parts of space. During the day, the side of Earth where you live faces the Sun. As that part turns away from the Sun, it becomes night. The rotation of Earth changes day into night and night into day again.

Apparent motion is the way something appears, or seems, to move. The Sun appears to rise in the east. It seems to set in the west. Apparent motion is not real motion.

Earth's rotation causes the apparent motion of many objects in space. Stars only seem to move. The Moon and planets do not always move in the same direction as their apparent motion.

Not only does Earth rotate around its axis, it also revolves around the Sun. Revolution is when one object travels around another.

The path a revolving object takes is its orbit. Earth's orbit is shaped like an ellipse, or flattened circle. Earth's orbit around the Sun takes 365 days.

Earth's axis is not straight up and down. It is tilted at an angle of 23.5 degrees. The tilt points in the same direction throughout Earth's orbit.

Earth's tilt causes sunlight to strike Earth at different angles. At any given time, each hemisphere, or half, of Earth gets more or less sunlight.

Near the equator, the Sun's apparent path changes much less during the year. Temperatures there change little from season to season.

Near the poles, the Sun's apparent path is very different between seasons.