Astronomy Picture of the Day - Planets of the Solar System: Tilts and Spins

NASA ^ | 14 Sep, 2025 | Video Credit: NASA, Animation: James O'Donoghue (U. Reading)

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets in our Solar System to show them spinning side-by-side for an easy comparison. In the time-lapse video, a day on Earth -- one Earth rotation -- takes just a few seconds. Jupiter rotates the fastest, while Venus spins not only the slowest (can you see it?), but backwards. The inner rocky planets across the top underwent dramatic spin-altering collisions during the early days of the Solar System. Why planets spin and tilt as they do remains a topic of research with much insight gained from modern computer modeling and the recent discovery and analysis of hundreds of exoplanets: planets orbiting other stars.

[MtnClimber]

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Today's image is a video at the source link.

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

Today's image is a video at the source link.

[philman_36]

With a $69.8 million per day budget Americans get animations/cartoons.

It boggles the mind.

[MtnClimber]

That is my opinion too.

[DoodleBob]

THEY MISSED ONE.

[Fungi]

For NASA in toto or just for APOD?

[telescope115]

Thanks for including Pluto. I still consider it a bona- fide planet….. I don’t care WHAT the IAU says.

[FatherofFive]

Thanks for including Pluto. I still consider it a bona- fide planet….. I don’t care WHAT the IAU says.

Pluto is a planette!

[Larry Lucido]

[HandyDandy]

I was born and brought up in a solar system of nine planets. I scoffed at all attempts to discount Pluto. I counted them as leftist cancel culture. Until the other day. The other day I learned how big Pluto is. Do you know how big Pluto is? …….say, in relation to our own Moon?

[Nateman]

Funny how the biggest, most massive planet of all spins the fastest. You’d think it would be the hardest one to get spinning!

[Nateman]

That is the budget for NASA. I bet if you were around in Spain around 1492 you would have complained about the money spent on this Columbus guy.

[philman_36]

It was her greed, a desire for a trade route, that caused her to pay for the trip.

JMO, YMMV

[philman_36]

[BBB333]

“With a $69.8 million per day budget Americans get animations/cartoons.
It boggles the mind.”

---

“...NASA images of all eight planets...”

And they leave poor lil Pluto out of the cartoon...

[philman_36]

Speaking of cartoons...see reply 14.

[telescope115]

I know Pluto is smaller than the Moon. It’s just my opinion, that they should’ve left it’s status unchanged.

[BBB333]

<;-)

[SunkenCiv]

Hope I'm not dogpilin' on...

"To Pluto And Far Beyond" By David H. Levy, Parade, January 15, 2006 -- We don't have a dictionary definition yet that includes all the contingencies. In the wake of the new discovery, however, the International Astronomical Union has set up a group to develop a workable definition of planet. For our part, in consultation with several experienced planetary astronomers, Parade offers this definition: A planet is a body large enough that, when it formed, it condensed under its own gravity to be shaped like a sphere. It orbits a star directly and is not a moon of another planet.

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