Dose the moon orbit the sun?

Question

Dose the moon orbit the sun?

Answer 1

If we just look at the sun, earth, moon system, all three bodies orbit the center of mass of this 3-body system. Since the sun is much more massive than the other two bodies, the location of the center of mass of this system is inside the sun, so the sun moves very little, while the earth and moon appear to orbit the sun.



Now, the earth and the moon also interact gravitationally, and they orbit the center of mass of the earth moon system The center of mass of this earth-moon system is located inside the earth, so the moon looks like it orbits the earth.



You can view the earth and moon as being in orbit around their center of mass, and the earth-moon system center of mass being in orbit around the earth-sun-moon system.



If the sun, earth, moon had equivalent masses, and if there were no other gravity bodies in the universe, they would appear to have orbits around the center of mass of this smaller earth, moon, sun system.



I think the term"orbit" can be a little confusing because it's not always clearly defined. The gravitational attraction of the sun on the moon is greater than the earth's attraction on the moon, so you could also argue that the moon really orbits the sun, with it's orbit modified by the earth.

Answer 2

Yes...The moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, therefore the moon orbits the sun. You might envision it to be a "cyclospiral" but according to the link below



It is not a circle, but is close to a 13-gon with rounded corners. It is locally convex in the sense that it has no loops and the curvature never changes sign. The reason why we get a 13-gon is because there are about 13.4 sidereal months in a tropical year.

Answer 3

directly? no. but in a round about way, yes. It revolves around the earth as IT revloves around the sun.