1878: Earth Orbital Diagram

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Earth Orbital Diagram

Title text: You shouldn't look directly at a partial eclipse because of the damage that can be caused by improperly aligning the solar-lunar orbital plane with the orbital bones around your eye.

Explanation

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Moreover, all these labels are complicated words, some are somewhat related to orbital mechanics ("equinox", "perihelion") while some are just latin sounding nouns.

This comic is the third consecutive comic published in the week before the solar eclipse occurring on Monday, August 21, 2017 which is a total solar eclipse and visible in totality within a band across the contiguous United States from west to east. The other comics are 1876: Eclipse Searches and 1877: Eclipse Science.

In this comic Randall claims to provide an explanation how solar eclipses work but in fact he shows a diagram with labels mixed up of nonsense.

Transcript

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Discussion

I guess first off, we should note the "solstice" is *not* the Bristish equivalent of "equinox" -- they are actually opposites. The equinoxes occur in April and September, when the day & night are equal length, and the solstices occur in June and December, when the length of daylight and nightime, respectively, are at their longest. JamesCurran (talk) 15:30, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Technically, the opposite of solstice is the other solstice. Solstice and equinoxes are orthogonal. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:01, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Being picky but the Equinox/Solstice section refers to equinoxes marking the start of either spring or autumn, but actually both equinoxes mark the beginning of both spring and autumn in opposite hemispheres. ExternalMonolog (talk) 22:08, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

"Determinant of the date of Easter" refers to the fact that in the Catholic Church (and possibly other Christian denomiations) the date of Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon of Spring, which means it is an astronomical calculation, but completely unrelated to the indicated angle. JamesCurran (talk) 16:28, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, everyone celebrates Easter on the same day, right? So it's the first Sunday after the first full moon for everybody. Berets (talk) 23:20, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

No, not all denominations agree on the date of Easter; a particular example being the Orthodox church, which usually has Easter a week after the Catholic church, but sometimes as much as five weeks later. The difference is caused by the two denominations using different idealized calendars, both lunar and solar, as well as a slight difference in the definition. 162.158.69.57 18:41, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

"Astral planes" might as well be a Unicode reference, taking into account Randall's occasional mention of emoji, since emoji reside on one of the astral planes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_%28Unicode%29 141.101.105.168 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That supplementary planes humorously refer also to Astral planes as mentioned in this explanation.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:54, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Solstice comes from the Latin ... Sol = Sun .. Sistere = Stand still. It literally means the day the sun stands still and refers to the longest day of the year (summer) and the shortest day of the year (winter). So how does the Sun "stand still". On those days the Earth reaches either end of orbital ellipse and returns around the other side. If you stick a pole in the ground and observe its shadow every day at Noon you will see the shadow grow longer every day from winter to summer and grow shorter every day from summer to winter. The shadow is shortest when the Sun is highest in the sky at mid-summer and the shadow is longest when the sun is lowest in the sky at mid-winter. The sun is either getting higher in the sky or lower in the sky every day. When the Earth is at the end of the ellipse and the transition takes place the shadow will not make any noticeable change from one day to the next and one could say that the "Sun has stood still". Rtanenbaum (talk) 19:36, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that Solstice/Equinox thing is a reference to Randall having a hobby of spreading linguistic misinformation, as seen in 1677:Contrails. 172.68.26.251 00:32, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the labels of the planes are, but they certainly aren't Greek letters. They look like alchemical symbols to me. 162.158.74.243 00:56, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Part of the humor of Declension is that it's a portmanteau of right ascension and declination. Right now only declination is mentioned. 162.158.75.40 02:43, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Arctangent is also a music festival in the UK, happening when this comic came out. --162.158.234.46 22:30, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Enceliopsis could use a little more detail, as there's a funny little redundancy there. The "-psis" suffix refers to the apex of an orbit, i.e., the apoapsis is the farthest orbit point and the periapsis is the closest. And the "-helion" suffix in aphelion/perihelion is the same thing, but for the more specific case of orbits around the sun. So using both together in the case of "-elio-psis" effectively gives a suffix with the meaning "pertaining to an orbital apex and pertaining to an orbital apex around the sun". SomeDee (talk) 14:54, 22 June 2023 (UTC)