NRAO telescopes are open to all astronomers regardless of institutional or national affiliation. Operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.įounded in 1956, the NRAO provides state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the international scientific community.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation These oddities are thought to be caused by events, such as collisions, which occurred during the formation of the solar system. on its side), while Venus rotates about its axis in a clockwise direction.

Uranus rotates about an axis that is nearly parallel with its orbital plane (i.e. Note, though, that there are two oddballs in our solar system that do not rotate in the same way as the rest of the planets. We could easily have found ourselves living in a solar system which was rotating clockwise about our Sun, if that was the initial state of rotation of the gas and dust cloud from which our solar system formed. There is nothing special about a counter-clockwise rotation, though. That rotation just happened to be in a counter-clockwise direction.

As this gas and dust cloud began to collapse it also began to rotate. This is due to the initial conditions in the cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system formed. Question: The planets in our solar system are orbiting the Sun counter clockwise, why? Do the laws of physics dictate that all planet orbit their respective stars counter clockwise or is it possible to have a solar system where the planets are in a clockwise motion around their star? - DavidĪnswer: Most of the objects in our solar system, including the Sun, planets, and asteroids, all rotate counter-clockwise.

Which planet rotates clockwise