Answer: When watching the stars at night, they do appear to move very slowly. This is because the Earth is constantly moving. The Earth completes one “rotation” every twenty-four hours. A rotation is when the planet spins around once. The Earth rotates counterclockwise; this is why the Sun “rises” in the East and “sets” in the West. It is not the Sun’s movement that causes days, but rather the Earth turning around in front of the Sun.
The Earth’s axis (the point at which it rotates around, for example, if you were to spin around while standing in one spot, your axis would be an imaginary line running through your head straight down to your feet) is in line with a star named “Polaris”. Polaris is also known as the “North Star” since it is directly above the Earth’s axis.
Since this star is directly above the Earth’s axis, it does not appear to move, however, the rest of the stars in the sky move around Polaris (for example: when you spin around, the object directly above your head does not appear to move but everything else seems to spin around that object). Polaris is only seen in the Northern hemisphere and it belongs to the Little Dipper constellation (it’s the last star at the end of the “handle”). Another type of motion is known as “revolution”. Revolution is when one object completes a circular path around another object. The Earth takes 365.24 days to revolve around the Sun. This is why a year is 365 days long. During the year the Earth is angled differently towards the Sun. These changing angles provide us with different Sun intensities and therefore we get four different seasons. Since the Earth is at different positions in space over the year, we see different constellations throughout the year.
