You feel perfectly still. You are moving very fast.

Right now you are riding two enormous motions at once: the planet turning under your feet, and the whole planet swinging around the Sun. Neither one is something you can feel, because you and the air and the ground are all going the same speed. Here is what those speeds actually are.

Spinning on its axis
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Orbiting the Sun
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Travelled since you opened this page
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mostly orbital β€” the spin is a rounding error
01

Your spot, going around the axis

Earth turns once every 23 h 56 m 4 s. Everyone completes that circle in the same time β€” but the circle is a very different size depending on how far you are from the axis. At the equator you sweep out 40,000 km. Standing exactly on a pole, you just pivot.

The globe below is the real thing, right now: the Sun held fixed while the Earth turns under it, the true day/night line for this moment, and your actual spot marked β€” gold in daylight, blue after dark. At Live it moves at 15Β° an hour, which is too slow to watch, so the buttons wind it forward without ever pretending that is the real pace.

A globe with latitude rings, showing your position sweeping around its circle of latitude
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Your positionβ€”
Local solar timeβ€”
Circle you traceβ€”
Distance from axisβ€”
One full turn23 h 56 m 04 s
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This globe is live β€” real Sun position, real terminator, your real spot. Speed: real time.
Your location is used in the browser only β€” nothing is sent anywhere.
02

The whole planet, going around the Sun

This one is the same for everybody, and it is roughly 64 times faster than the spin. The orbit below is drawn true to shape, which is the surprise: it really is that close to a perfect circle. The Sun is off-centre by 2.5 million km β€” a huge number that still amounts to about two pixels here. Earth speeds up when it is closer in and slows down when it is further out, and that variation is far easier to see on the graph than in the picture.

Earth's orbit around the Sun, with the Sun slightly off-centre and Earth at today's position
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Date shownβ€”
Distance to Sunβ€”
Sunlight travel timeβ€”
Nearest / furthest147.1M / 152.1M km
One full orbit365 d 6 h 9 m
Orbital speed across the year