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Writer's pictureMoiya McTier

Astronomy Fun Fact #2

Updated: May 3, 2019

Looking down from above (meaning looking down from above the North Pole), the moon is orbiting counter-clockwise around the Earth, the Earth is orbiting counter-clockwise around the Sun, and the Sun is orbiting clockwise around the center of the Milky Way!

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mylesbkeating
20 abr 2019

@moiya ok cool, so theoretically if there was one massive big bang flash point starting it all and that happened to spin in this counterclockwise direction, could that have cascaded down each level to solar systems, moon orbits, planet rotations, etc.? Or put another way, are there any galaxies that rotate the other way?

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Moiya McTier
Moiya McTier
20 abr 2019

@myles, I don't think so. There's no reason it had to be this way, since there's no preferred direction in space. But the determining factor in the direction of most orbits is the spin direction of whatever nebulous cloud created the system in the first place. So the planets orbit counter-clockwise because the gas cloud that formed the sun collapsed in a counter-clockwise fashion.

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mylesbkeating
20 abr 2019

is there a known reason for this?

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