Do all the planets orbit in the same direction?
This question leads us into all kinds of interesting information about the neat little package of heavenly bodies which we call the Solar System. True, the Solar System still seems large to us and it will seem this way until our space ships are zooming back and forth among our sister planets. Then, perhaps, we shall get a truer realization of our proper proportion in the starry heavens.
Our Solar System is actually a small backyard in the vast system of stare called the Galaxy. There are about 100 billion suns in this Big Wheel and many of them have planet systems like our own. Nevertheless, our Solar System is a miracle of orderly neatness. This should not surprise us, for the microscope has shown us orderly beauty in the tiniest of particles. Order and beauty are designed into all creation, large or small.
The nine planets of the Solar System orbit the sun at various distances. They are different sizes and different densities. Some have no moons, one has at least a dozen. They are warmer or cooler, brighter or dimmer depending upon their distance from the sun. But they have more similarities than differences.
Each planet travels around the sun in the same direction, from the west toward the east. This is the same direction in which the seething sun rotates on its axis, The entire whirling, twirling carousel is swinging around as though the separate parts belonged to a single wheel. The orbits of the planets are tipped, some more so than others, but all are roughly on. a level with the sun’s equator.
The,earth,rotates in the same direction it travels around its orbit, from west to east.
Venus is veiled in clouds too thick for a telescope 'to pierce and we cannot see the direction in which it rotates. But most planets rotate in the same direction as the earth. Big, fat Uranus, however, rotates in the opposite direction and it is tilted so far to the plane of its orbit that it seems to spin along on its side.
The outer rim of the Solar System is the orbit of Pluto, and from side to side the whirling circle measures somewhat more than six thousand million miles. The orbits of the planets are separated by millions of miles of empty space and each keeps to its own track. It was demonstrated long ago that our solar family is a stable system and will. continue to roll on its merry way without mishap indefinitely.
In miles, our Solar System seems large indeed. But lens imagine a small scale model in which the sun is reduced to the size of a beach ball. The earth would shrink to the size of a pea and the entire solar family would fit nicely on a round island about three and a half miles wide.