Ecliptic was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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The content of Plane_of_the_ecliptic was merged into Ecliptic on 23 Mar 2012. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.
answers
Re questions: yes, the earth moving in its orbit creates the apparent motion of the Sun against the stars. The ecliptic plane contains (roughly speaking) the orbits of most of the major planets, including the earth's. (Pluto being the most obvious exception.)
Something else that you can see by "speeding things up" in a decent astronomy program; the apparent path of the ecliptic in the sky (and hence of the planets "travelling" it) rises beginning on Dec. 22 (winter solstice) and falls beginning on June 22 (summer solstice). It also "rocks" back and forth. I recommend looking at a decent astronomy program (there are some good freeware ones) to see and understand these relationships better. -- Twang Mar 3, 2006
I smell plagiarism, Section "Ecliptic and Sun"
See the comment "(as from the list in the previous chapter)" (italics added) from the section on "Ecliptic and Sun."
Either somebody copy-pasted something, or else somebody misnomed a "section" as a "chapter."
Worrisome.
Orientation of the Earth's axis
Currently, if the Earth's axis is projected onto the ecliptic plane, what is the angle between the projection and the semi-major axis of the orbit? My estimate based on the right ascensions at winter solstice and at perihelion is about 13. Tilt alone does not define the orientation of the Earth's axis. --Roland (talk) 14:59, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
Article review
It has been a while since this article has been reviewed, so I took a look and noticed lots of uncited statements, including entire paragraphs. Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 02:28, 8 January 2026 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Can you give at least one example of a statement that does not fall into one of these four cases? Jc3s5h (talk) 19:24, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
@Jc3s5h: Before those bulleted statements, WP:V says "Each fact or claim in an article must be verifiable. Additionally, four types of information must be accompanied by an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[b] the material." Therefore, it is not correct that WP:V policy "only requires inline citations in those four cases." Rather, those are four examples of when inline citations would be required.
GARs are reviewed against the GA criteria, which states in 3b, "All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose)." I can add citation needed templates to the article in places that are not cited if requested. Z1720 (talk) 20:35, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
I would only consider such an effort meaningful if you explain why a passage could reasonably be challenged. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:05, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
@Jc3s5h: There are several uncited statements and explaining how each uncited statement can be challenged is very time consuming. Instead, I am going to add citation needed templates to the article. If an editor thinks a tagged statement doesn't warrant a citation, they can post the statement below and explain why the citation isn't needed. Please note that if an entire paragraph is uncited, only one citation needed template will be placed at the end of the last sentence of the paragraph. Z1720 (talk) 02:45, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
@Z1720: I've addressed one of your missing citations. As for the paragraph starting "Ecliptic coordinates are convenient for specifying positions of Solar System objects...", I think this may actually be original research. I rarely (if ever) have seen ecliptic coordinates used in this way. What they are used for is express pole solutions (spin axis orientation) for small solar system objects, but not their positions in the sky. Renerpho (talk) 03:16, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
I've added one more citation needed tag, to "Most of the major bodies of the Solar System orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane. This is likely due to the way in which the Solar System formed from a protoplanetary disk." This is true, and it shouldn't be terribly difficult to find a source. However, neither of the featured articles Solar System and Formation and evolution of the Solar System actually say this (the latter doesn't even mention the ecliptic), and the same claim in Protoplanetary disk is currently without a source. So it's not entirely trivial. Solar System#Orbits gives the formation of the Solar System as the reason why all planets orbit the Sun counter-clockwise, but not why they all orbit in the same plane. Renerpho (talk) 03:26, 2 May 2026 (UTC) -- Astronomical coordinate systems#Ecliptic system states that "The system is primarily used for computing the positions of planets and other Solar System bodies, as well as defining their orbital elements", but without a citation; and Ecliptic coordinate system says in the lede that "because most planets (except Mercury) and many small Solar System bodies have orbits with only slight inclinations to the ecliptic, using it as the fundamental plane is convenient", but doesn't provide a source for this either, and doesn't specify how it is convenient (this does not mean that it is used to express their positions in ecliptic coordinates). Renerpho (talk) 03:47, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
It may be a while before I can dig into this; my computer glasses are in the lab for lens replacement. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:55, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
@Jc3s5h: To be fair, Z1720 asked in January on the article talk page if the issues warrant a GAR -- and got no response. Renerpho (talk) 03:01, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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