Retrograde Motion Visualization of Mercury #shorts
208What does Mercury retrograde really mean? Check out this cool visualization that shows that retrograde motion is simply an optical illusion!
Retrograde motion is an APPARENT change in the movement of the planet through the sky. It is not REAL in that the planet does not physically start moving backwards in its orbit. It just appears to do so because of the relative positions of the planet and Earth and how they are moving around the Sun.
Normally, the planets move west-to-east through the stars at night. This is referred to as prograde motion. However, peridiocally the motion changes and they move east-to-west through the stars. We call this retrograde motion. The retrograde motion continues for a short time and then the motion switches back to prograde. This seemingly strange behavior is easily understood within the context of a Sun-centered (heliocentric) solar system. The explanation for retrograde motion in a heliocentric model is that retrograde occurs roughly when a faster moving planet catches up to and passes a slower moving planet.
How the planet Mars would appear to have both prograde then retrograde then prograde motion is shown in the diagram below. Notice that it is all due to the fact that the Earth moves faster in its orbit than does Mars. So as we catch up to that planet in its orbit and then move beyond it, the motion appears to go through the pro-retro-pro cycle.
Visualization is based on a video by James O’Donoghue / NASA
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For more details:
https://starwalk.space/en/news/what-is-retrograde-motion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_retrograde_motion
https://www.britannica.com/science/retrograde-motion
#science #planets #solarsystem #spacemystery #asteroid #thegalacticwizard