The sky is a spinning dome

⏱ 3 min read

Stand still for an hour and the whole sky quietly slides past you.

Through the night the stars appear to drift from east to west. But they aren’t moving — you are. Earth spins west-to-east once a day, and that turning makes the whole sky look like it’s wheeling overhead.

As Earth turns, every star traces a circle around a single fixed point in the sky — the celestial pole.

Why do the stars appear to move across the sky each night?

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