2. Lecture 11 0f 12
• Let,s take a look the moon synchronous orbit,and what we mean by
that
•
Well it turns out…if we go far back in history..
• Say 4 billion years or s..not long after the moon was formed most
likely by a giant collision of a big object with the Earth..
•
3. • It took off a piece of the Earth..and all that debris..went up into
space..because of the gravitational attraction…to the Earth…it stayed
close enough and coeleesed into a sphere
4. •
And, it began to revolve around..the Earth and rather beccame..our
Moon, well it turns out that the Moon would also be rotating on its
axis..and the speed of which it rotated on its axis…would have been
greater..than the time it take fir..the moon to take one trip around the
Earth
•
5. • So see those little arrows here…they represent a particular point on
moon the surface of the moon, and notice as the moon and the orbit
of the moon will be in this direction, like so…
6. • You can see that as the moon takes its trip around the Earth the
Moon rotates faster and so that same point of the moon will then of
course keep going around and around and around…
7. • As the moon is rotating or revolving around the Eartg, so You can see
the same part of the moon is always visible here. The front side of the
Moon is visible and then over here the back side of the Moon back to
the front side of the Moon
•
8. • And, back to the back side of the moon and so forth as it goes around
10. • Today..the rotational rate of the moon is exactly in synch….that’s why
we call it a synchronous orbit..the rotation of the moon is exactly in
synchwith the time it takes for the moon to take on trip around the
earth
11. • As the moon is slowly revolving around the Earth..you see that the
same phase of the moon is always pointing towards the aearth…you
never see the backside of the moon
12. • Alleast.. not from the Earth…to see the back side of the moon..we
have to go and travel with a space rocket…to the other side and take
pictures of it
