Earth and Moon

  • Released Friday, May 31st, 2013
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:52PM
  • ID: 4068

A simple visualization of Moon orbiting Earth in a view from the north ecliptic pole.

There are two versions. The standard version has Earth and Moon at the proper scale in relation to their orbit. The oversize version has Earth and Moon five times larger.

The animation run corresponds to a time of three months. The camera orientation is fixed in space (relative to the distant stars) so the stars do not move but we see the changing direction of the Sun based on the lit hemisphere of Earth and Moon.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio


Datasets used in this visualization

DE421 (A.K.A. JPL DE421)
Ephemeris NASA/JPL

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.