Saturn’s spin is a little bit tilted, so we get to see changing views of its rings over time. Jupiter and Saturn spin quite a bit faster than Earth, taking only about 10 hours to rotate. Most are spinning in the same direction, too. Not only that, the Earth orbits the Sun in the same direction, as do all the other planets and more than a million asteroids and dwarf planets. In fact, it spins in the same direction the Earth does. To understand why this happens, let’s see what we can learn from other bodies in space.
Your fingers will naturally curl around your hand, and the direction those fingers are pointing is the way Earth spins.Įvery 24 hours, the Earth makes a full rotation, spinning west to east, which is why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and the stars at night appear to move across the sky. Imagine your thumb is the Earth’s rotation axis, pointing to the North Pole. If you want to know which way to spin your globe, make the goofy “thumbs-up” sign with your right hand. Satellite images over one day show Earth rotating on its axis.
