Question

Even though earth has ____ mass than the sun, the moon orbits earth because it much nearer to it.

Answer 1

Answer:

The word that fills the blank is:

• Even though earth has less mass than the sun, the moon orbits earth because it much nearer to it.

Explanation:

Two very important factors intervene to be affected by the gravity of a body:

1. body mass.
2. The distance from the celestial body.

Although the sun has a distance many times greater than Earth (1,989 × 10 ^ 30 kg and 5,972 × 10 ^ 24 kg respectively), the moon orbits the Earth since the distance between these two is 384,400 km, a distance very small when compared to the distance to the sun which is approximately 149.6 million km.

Answer 2

Even though the Earth has less mass than the Sun, the moon orbits Earth because it’s much nearer to it.

Explanation :

The fact is that the Moon orbits both the Sun and the Earth. On looking at the orbit of the Moon, it orbits in the same manner the way Earth does, but in a Spiro graph pattern along with orbiting the Earth with a small wobble to it.  

Since the Sun has greater distance from the Moon as compared to the Earth (around 400 times), the gravity of Earth draws better impact on the Moon.  

The escape velocity of the Moon is about 1.2 km/s at the distance from the Earth which is not sufficient to get ripped away from the Earth.  

Hence, the moon orbits the Earth along with orbiting the Sun together with the Earth, but seems as if it only orbits the Moon.