Earth tilt

Pictures are numbered to aid referencing.

1

Axes

Axes are straight lines that objects rotate around. Think of a wheel on a bicycle. The wheel rotates about the axis through the centre of the wheel. The Earth doesn't have a physical axis that it rotates around, but it does have an imaginary rotation axis.  source

Imagine a ball with a stick in the centre or look again at Picture 1.  Spin it in your head.

 

2    We'll need to look at this in the class. Look at the words at the bottom of the picture and find the ecliptic.  It's not easy to understand so don't worry.

eclipictic

1   The ecliptic is the great circle of the celestial sphere which is cut by the plane of the earth's orbit. 

2.  A great circle inscribed on a terrestrial globe inclined at an approximate angle of 23°26′ to the equator and representing the apparent motion of the sun in relation to the earth during a year.

  3                 barycentre here

 

4

5

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6 & 7

8    More via Bitesize

9

10

Without moving up the page, which way does the earth go round?

There's a piece of equipment which is relevant to this page here.  It's expensive but I have one.  All these sites and plenty of things such as model planets are my hobby.

Lessons

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