Image: Horseshoe orbit of Cruithne from the perspective of Earth

Description: The orbits of Cruithne and Earth over the course of a year (from September 2007 to August 2008). Cruithne's location is indicated by the red box as it is too small to be seen at this distance. Earth is the white dot moving along the blue circle. The pale yellow circle in the centre is our Sun. The blue circle represents the path of Earth as it revolves counter-clockwise around the sun. The "camera" revolves with Earth, so Earth appears to not be moving. The red path represents the path that Cruithne takes as it revolves around the sun. Since the camera is rotating with Earth, Cruithne appears to move along a bean-shaped path. This illusion is known as a Horseshoe orbit.
Title: Horseshoe orbit of Cruithne from the perspective of Earth
Credit: Frames from the GIF were acquired from the GFDL-licensed Celestia program in the form of screen shots using the Mac OS X screen-capture feature. Screen captures were converted into an animated GIF using GraphicConverter's batch edit feature by User:Jecowa.
Author: User:Jecowa
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License: CC BY-SA 3.0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Attribution Required?: Yes