Animations by
Chris Smith
Released on December 27, 2012
When you think of the Earth's orientation, you'd probably imagine something like a globe, where it always rotates around an axis, called the spin axis, defined by the north and south poles. And while this generally makes sense, in reality, the Earth's orientation is constantly changing very slightly, and this change can be described in three ways. Learn more about how the Earth's orientation changes by watching the animations below!
Note: All motion in these animations is greatly exaggerated for clarity.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0