Module 3:

The Celestial Sphere

Activity 2:

Tracking the Planets

Summary:

In this Activity, we will investigate

(a) planetary distances,

(b) phases of the innermost planets,
(c) retrograde motion of the outer planets, and
(d) orbital and rotational periods.
(a) Planetary Distances
The apparent motions of the planets (or “wanderers”) across
our nighttime sky does not coincide with the regular rotation of
the stars around the celestial poles.

Instead their motions fall in a narrow band around the

ecliptic, which, as we saw in the Activity Star Patterns,
is the Sun’s path across the sky.
Remember that the plane of the ecliptic is an imaginary
planar surface in space containing the Earth’s orbit and
the Sun:
The other planets’ orbits are in or close to the ecliptic
too, which is why they seem to follow the Sun’s path
from east to west across the sky.

planetary orbits

(This is not to scale! For example, Pluto’s average distance

from the Sun is actually 100 times that of Mercury.)
It’s very difficult to draw a scale model of planetary orbits in our
Solar System, because of the vast extremes of scale. For
example, the orbits of the outer five planets occupy a radius of
about 19 times that occupied by the four inner planets.
If mechanical Orrerys like this

© Brian Greig 1998

were built to scale, then even if
the diameter of Mercury was
chosen to be only 1mm, then the
Sun’s diameter would need to be
30cm, and the distance from the
Sun to Saturn would be
approximately 29 metres!

Thus Orrerys are not built to scale in distance or in size, but the
periods of revolution of the planets are represented to scale.
On the Internet site, you can visit a “virtual Orrery” at Solar
System Live at http://www.fourmilab.ch/solar/solar.html

Or visit the Build a Solar System site at

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/index.html
where you can build your own scale model of the Solar
System. You will be asked to nominate a size for the Sun
and the Solar System builder will then work out for you the
sizes of and distances to all the planets to scale.
Distances in the Solar System are in fact very large!
To compare the average distances between the Sun and
each of the planets, it’s convenient to do it in terms of
the average Earth–Sun separation.

Astronomers define a convenient unit of length:

The AU (astronomical unit)
= average distance between Sun and Earth
= 1.496 x 1011 m

1 AU
In order of distance from the Sun, the planets are (not to scale!):

Mercury,
0.39 AU from the Sun
on average
Venus,
0.72 AU from the Sun
on average
Earth,
1.00 AU from the Sun
on average
(by definition!)
Mars,
1.52 AU from the Sun
on average
Jupiter,
5.20 AU from the Sun
on average
Saturn,
9.54 AU from the Sun
on average
Uranus,
19.2 AU from the Sun
on average
 Neptune,
30.0 AU from the Sun
on average

Pluto & its companion Charon,

39.5 AU from the Sun
on average

Pluto is usually the furthest planet from the Sun, but its
eccentric orbit brings it closer than Neptune on occasion
- for example, between Jan 21, 1979 and Mar 14, 1999.
(b) Phases of the innermost planets

The innermost planets, Mercury and Venus, never stray

very far from the Sun from our vantage point on Earth.
The Sun illuminates one side of each planet: depending
on where Mercury and Venus are in relation to the Earth
and the Sun, they exhibit phases just like the phases of
the Moon.
 For example, here is
Venus viewed “side-on”
from the Sun, captured
by the Hubble Space
Telescope in ultraviolet
light:

For images and a movie of the phases of Venus, visit:

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/phys/observatory/images/venus/
When Venus is on the same side of the Sun as the Earth,
we see it in crescent phase with a large angular size.
When Venus is on the opposite side of the Sun, in gibbous
or nearly full phase, its angular size is small.
gibbous gibbous

half half
crescent crescent

Earth

To see how this comes about, follow this link to a simulation

which demonstrates the phases of Venus.
(c) Retrograde Motion
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn (& Uranus, Neptune and Pluto)
wander far from the Sun, always appearing close to ‘full’
phase, but showing, at times, retrograde motion.

For example, if we keep track of the position of Mars in

the sky at the same time each night, over a period of
many months, it will appear to move along the ecliptic,
then, at some stage, it will appear to “loop the loop”
Retrograde motion caused great difficulties in the past to
natural philosophers who tried to model the Solar System
as being centred on Earth.
However retrograde motion is easily explained in the
heliocentric model, where the planets travel in elliptical
(& nearly circular) orbits around the Sun with each planet
travelling more slowly as we move out from the Sun.
Then retrograde motion is analogous to the effect of
passing another car travelling on the inside lane of a
freeway - the other car appears to be going backwards.

To see how retrograding comes about, click here to see

an animation illustrating the retrograde motion of Mars.
What about the inner planets - Venus and Mercury? Do
you think that they too can exhibit retrograde motion?
It turns out that they can. The
inferior planets (meaning those
planets inside the orbit of the
Earth – Venus and Mercury)
exhibit apparent retrograde
motion when at inferior superior
inferior
conjunction (passing between the conjunction conjunction
Earth and the Sun). orbit of interior planet

They then “over take” the Earth and temporarily appear to

have an east to west motion relative to the background stars.
 Apparent retrograde motion of Venus

Retrograde motion of
an inferior planet near
inferior conjunction as
the planets “overtakes
Background stars the Earth on the inside
Venus lane”.
Earth
The superior planets (with orbits outside that of the Earth
– so Mars, Jupiter & Saturn) appear to move “backwards”
at opposition (when both planets are on the same side of
the Sun).

In this case the

Earth “over takes”
the planet.

opposition
conjunction

orbit of superior planet

 Apparent retrograde motion of Mars

Retrograde motion
of a superior planet
near opposition
Background stars as the Earth
Mars “overtakes on the
Earth inside lane”.
(d) Orbital & Rotational Periods

Just as the Earth rotates

around a rotational axis ...
… so do the other planets. This rotation produces day
and night on these planets too, but as we will see the
length of the day - the rotational period - can be quite
different on other planets to that on Earth:
In order of distance from the Sun, the planets are (again, not to
scale):

On Mercury,
the length of the sidereal day
is 59 Earth days.
On Venus,
the length of the sidereal day
is 243 Earth days.
 On Earth,
the length of the sidereal day
is (almost) 1 Earth day.*

* In the last Activity we saw that a sidereal day is

about 4 minutes shorter than a mean solar day on Earth.
On Mars,
the length of the sidereal day
is 1.03 Earth days .
On Jupiter,
the length of the sidereal day
is 0.41 Earth days.
On Saturn,
the length of the sidereal day
is 0.43 Earth days.
 On Uranus,
the length of the sidereal day
is 0.72 Earth days.

Note the angle of the rotation axis of Uranus

- as we will see in a later Module, Uranus rotates
on its side, which gives it very unusual days & nights!
 On Neptune,
the length of the sidereal day
is 0.67 Earth days.

On Pluto & its companion

Charon,
the length of the sidereal day
is 6.4 Earth days.

(Pluto rotates almost on its side too.)

As you can see, there is no particular pattern in the
length of days on planets in our Solar System.

However the lengths of planetary sidereal years

- their orbital periods - do show a general trend, and so
do the speeds with which they orbit the Sun:
If we express each planet’s orbital period as multiples of
Earth years ...

Planet (Sidereal) Year

Mercury 0.241
Venus 0.615
Earth 1.00
Mars 1.88
Jupiter 11.9
Saturn 29.5
Uranus 84.0
Neptune 165
Pluto 249
… and also compare their average orbital speeds ...

Planet Orbital Speed (km/s)

Mercury 47.9
Venus 35.03
Earth 29.79
Mars 24.13
Jupiter 13.06
Saturn 9.64
Uranus 6.81
Neptune 5.43
Pluto 4.73
… we can see that the length of planetary years
increases and the orbital speed decreases as one
moves out from the neighbourhood of the Sun.

We’ll investigate this trend in the next Activity.

Image Credits
NASA: Mercury
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/merglobe.gif
NASA: Venus
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/venglobe.gif
NASA: Earth
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/earth.htm
NASA: Mars
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/marglobe.gif
NASA: Jupiter
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/jupglobe.gif
NASA: Saturn
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/2moons.gif
Image Credits
NASA: Uranus
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/uraglobe.gif
NASA: Neptune http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/nepglobe.gif
NASA: Pluto & Charon
http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/welcome/thumb/plutoch.gif
NASA: Ultraviolet image of Venus' clouds as seen by HST's Wide-Field
/Planetary Camera 2. (NASA Photo Numbers STScI-PRC95-16, 95-HC-114)
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/venus/hst_venus95.jpg
A Brian Greig Orrery © Brian Greig 1998 (used with permission)
www.planetariums.com
Now return to the Module home page, and read
more about planetary motion in the Textbook
Readings.

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