Can you see Earth spin?

[admin]

You can't watch Earth spin in real time because it rotates so slowly, but there are ways to see the effects of the planet's rotation.

Can you see Earth spin? : Read more

 

[Astro Wagon]

Yes....In a way you can. Get to a telescope make sure it has a drive that is off. Point the scope at the moon, planet or a star. When looking thru the scope the object will slowly move out of view. What causes it, is the earth's rotation (spin).

 

[A_Raybold]

The explanation of the tides given here repeats something that Galileo got wrong: there are two high tides a day, not one (he also thought the tides had nothing to do with the moon, attributing them solely to the earth's rotation and motion with respect to the sun, and while the sun does contribute to the tides, it is not in the way Galileo thought it did.)

Counter-intuitively, there is a high tide both where one's location is furthest from the moon as well as when closest (approximately, putting aside the influence of the sun, and of coastlines and shallow waters.) This can be explained as a consequence of the moon's gravitational field weakening with distance (see , e.g. "Tidal Force" in Wikipedia.)

 

[AMRadiohead3885]

I discovered how to directly view the rotation of the earth while playing outside as a kid when I was about 10 y.o. Take a small mirror, mid-morning or mid-afternoon on sunny day, like the ones that often come with a vial of face make-up. Set the mirror about 50 ft away from the shady side of a large object such as a building. Position the mirror so that the reflection is focussed on the building; it will appear as a disc of light (actually a fuzzy image of the sun, similar to the pin-hole camera effect). Now, come up near the building, and closely observe the edge of the disc of light. You will clearly see motion, like the second-hand of a clock, as the image slowly crawls along the surface of the wall. The motion will be even more obvious if you make a small pencil mark on the wall, as a reference point, right at the edge of the disc.