Encyclopedia > Synchronous rotation

  Article Content

Synchronous rotation

Synchronous rotation is a planetological term describing a body orbiting another, where the orbiting body takes as long to rotate on it's axis as it does to make one orbit; and as such, always keeps the same hemisphere pointed at the body it is orbiting.

The Moon and the Earth have a synchronic relationship. In fact, most moons in the solar system have synchronous rotation due to tidal locking.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Quadratic formula

... the formula should be understood as "either of those element(s) of the field whose square equals b2 - 4ac". In some fields, some elements have no ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 25.6 ms