Jump to content

Longitude of vernal equinox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Yobot (talk | contribs) at 20:29, 29 March 2014 (WP:CHECKWIKI error fixes + other fixes using AWB (10067)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Longitude of vernal equinox (abbrev. LOVE) of the celestial object such as a planet is the celestial longitude where vernal equinox crosses. On Earth, vernal equinox is at 0° longitude, on the First Point of Aries, meaning that longitude of vernal equinox is 0°. So this concept would have non-zero values only on other planets, such as 208° for Mars. The symbol of LOVE is γ.

Like axial tilt, LOVE is not constant over thousands of years. Changes of γ is called precession and the time it takes to rotate 360° is called Great Year or Platonic Year. For Earth, this period is approximately 25,772 years.