I was readin on the axial precession cycle of our beloved little planet, and I’m kind of list.
I can’t visualize what the cycle actually looks like. Does anyone know of a vid online that illustrates it?
The description mentions something along the lines of a spinning top.
The description also seems to indicate that at some point in the future (the cycle is 26,000 years long) the seasons would be reversed! I might be confused about that though, as they don’t explicitly say that would happen.
A spinning top that is wobbling, like when it starts to lose momentum and the axis starts slanting. While the top is rotating around its axis, the axis itself is describing a circle.
It’s almost exactly like a spinning top and for the same reason. Spinning body in a gravitational field produces torque.
Yeah, the seasons shift. Here is a diagram showing the shift of the vernal equinox (first day of spring) over 6K years.
The star we use as the north pole star also changes as it slowly transcribes a circle.
Thanks guys!
So when will say, New Jersey, have winter in August and summer in January?
It won’t ever happen if we stick to the calendar as it is. The calendar is set to the tropical year so that the time from one equinox to the next (or one solstice to the next) is a calendar year. What will happen is that the star patterns will change so that what are now summer constellations will be winter constellations about half way through the 26,000-year precession cycle.
