Orbit of the Moon the Moon's orbit around Earth, its relative timing varies greatly. In some places on Earth, there is only one high tide per day, whereas others such as Southampton have four, though this is somewhat rare. The notional tidal bulges are carried ahead of the Earth–Moon orientation by the continents as a result of Earth's rotation. The eccentric mass of each bulge exerts a small amount of gravitational attraction on the Moon, with the bulge on the side of Earth closest to the Moon pulling in a direction slightly forward along the Moon's orbit (because Earth's rotation has carried the bulge
Counter-Earth if a Counter-Earth existed, as the navigational calculations for their journeys did not take any putative Counter-Earth into account. Roughly speaking, anything larger than in diameter should have been detected. Furthermore, the gravitational forces of the other planets on a Counter-Earth would make "its" orbit unstable. Venus has 82% of the mass of Earth and would come within 0.3 AU of the location of a Counter-Earth every 20 months, providing considerable gravitational pull that over the years would move its orbit into sight of observers on Earth. If a Counter-Earth was much smaller than Earth, its location at the "Sun–Earth