What is synchronous rotation?
synchronous rotation, also known as captured rotation or tidal locking, is a physical phenomenon in astronomy, where a smaller body orbiting another rotates on its own axis at about the same time to complete one orbit around a larger body. This causes one side of the orbiting satellite to always face the body that orbits. One of the most visible examples is how the Moon orbits the Earth in about 27 days and is completing the revolution around its own axis at the same time.
While the moon's orbit is a synchronous rotation, it's not that perfect. This is largely due to the fact that the orbit of the moon around Earth has an elliptical shape, not perfectly circular. When the Moon is in its apogee, or the farthest distance from Earth 252 499 miles (406 357 kilometers), its revolution is slightly faster than its orbit. This reveals another 8 ° length of its western hemisphere.
When he is in his perige, the closer distance from Earth 221 699 miles (356 790 kilometers) is his revoLuce a little slower than her orbit. This reveals 8 ° degrees of the length of its eastern hemisphere. The moon also sits about 5 ° outside the ecliptic plane of the Earth, or a direct line that the Earth occupies in the orbiting sun, revealing another 7 ° polar width surface during orbit around the Earth.
While most months in our solar system are currently in synchronous rotation around their superior bodies, one of the remarkable exceptions is Moon Hyperion, orbiting the orbiting planet Saturn. Hyperion is an irregularly shaped moon that is the closest object in space to massive titanium, the largest moon of Saturn, which is more size than Mercury. Titan and Hyperion are locked in orbital resonance and affect each other's orbit around Saturn so that for every four orbit Saturn that Titan does, Hyperion produces three.
Cassini spacecraft made hyperion measurementOvy orbit in the tight floats of the month in 2005. The mission determined that Hyperion rotates between 4.2 and 4.5 times faster than it would be a synchronous speed. Hyperion's orbit is described as chaotic, because changes in its revolution around its own axis, which means that it has no definitive equator or poles. Its placement around Saturn at once is unpredictable.
When two bodies in the universe share close proximity to each other and similar physical size, both tend to share synchronous orbit around them. This applies to the dwarf planet Pluto and its biggest monthly Charon, which is only 12,000 miles from Pluto. The monthly Charon has a diameter of 790 miles (1,270 kilometers), so it is just over half the size of Pluto on a diameter of 1,440 miles (2,320 kilometers).
both Pluto and his monthly Charon turns on his sagging axis for about 6.3 days, each maintaining the same side of the surface that always deals with each other. This is the phenomenon that one dayThe country will also do with the moon. These unique properties have led to the fact that the Pluto-Charon system was marked as a double planet.
In addition to planets and months, other systems can also display synchronous rotation. Some binary stars in the Milky Way galaxy, two stars locked in orbit around them are also known to be in synchronous rotation. The Canadian microability and oscillation of the stars (most) cosmic telescope, launched in 2003, is designed to explore it.
Star Tau Bootis, about 50 bright years from Earth, was mostly discovered to be locked in synchronous rotation with Tau Bootis B, a massive planet about 7 to 8 times the size of the Jupiter that orbits Tau Bootis. Because he is 100 times closer to his mother star than Jupiter is on the Sun, Tau Bootis B orbits his sun every 3.3 days as a steady side of the star's surface always face the planet. Scientists theorized that many stars can actually be involved in such tidal locking with large circulatoryplanets that are close. However, it is likely that these planets are in orbit, as suggested by their close proximity to the stars.