Gregory's ServerRelative rotation periods of planets in 2D.
Credit: @Physicsj
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54 comments
 @wonderofscience @IAmDannyBoling @Physicsj Uranus should also be depicted with its line almost vertical across the others as it axis of rotation is tilted 98° @wonderofscience @Physicsj Good grief! Took some time to extricate my gaze. Infomatic hypno-spiral. 'Suddenly have a strange urge to buy a magazine on Astronomy... @wonderofscience @Physicsj watching the mercury and venus rotation on that gif makes me think of those conveyor belt ovens. They are toast. If this was twitter you'd be suspended for posting yet one more version of a gay flag of the solar system  @wonderofscience @Physicsj I hadn't realised the rotation periods of the Earth and Mars were so uncannily similar. Is there an underlying cause for this, or is it happenstance? I'd be less surprised if Earth and Venus had similar rotation periods, since they have similar mass! @simon_brooke @wonderofscience @Physicsj There are so many different random factors in even just one star system that you'll inevitability end up with a number of strange looking coincidences. Though the biggest one is the Sun having 400 times the diameter of the moon and also being 400 times as far from Earth, making them look nearly identical in size. @simon_brooke @wonderofscience @Physicsj I'm no expert, but it is not just mass. Closeness to the sun (close planets rotate slower) and possibly the existence of moons play a role. I also looked it up and apparently, no one knows exactly why Venus rotates so slowly (also compared to Mercury) and in the 'wrong' direction (the only one besides Uranus to rotate to the left instead of the right in the picture above). @wonderofscience @Physicsj I miss Pluto. Things were so much better when Pluto was a planet. You want to point to where it all went wrong @janwwbosch @wonderofscience @Physicsj It was never a planet. It was just miscategorised for 76 years. And honestly, it has been obvious for years that something was wrong with our classification scheme. I knew it was not a planet already in 1999. @polyna @janwwbosch @wonderofscience @Physicsj @polyna @wonderofscience @Physicsj NASA is going to be so embarrassed when ET shows up and discovers there is an oopsie on the Pioneer Plate @janwwbosch The solar system (and our own world) seemed more straightforward back then   @wonderofscience @Physicsj Oooh!! Is there a version that compares periods of revolution around the sun as well? I’d love to see that!!   @wonderofscience @Physicsj Are we just not going to talk about how the largest planet is also spinning the fastest? Holy incredible surface velocities, Batman.  @wonderofscience @Physicsj love the three U's (VenUs and UranUs, heh) having it their own way ...  @wonderofscience Fascinating. Mars, presumably humanity's first target outside our home planet's orbit, has a length of day just a little longer than our own. Adaptation won't be too difficult for the settlers. I had to think twice why the rotation time of earth is not exactly 24 hours. And why that doesn't mean, that once a year, midnight is at 12:00 instead of 00:00  Very cool. Looks like it uses the celestial day for Earth, but the solar day for Venus (haven't checked the others).  @wonderofscience@mastodon.social @Physicsj@mastodon.online So counterintuitive that the massive ones are spinning faster.  |
@wonderofscience @Physicsj great post!