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.