Why does the night sky appear to move slowly even though the earth is rotating at 1,000mph?

Question

Why does the night sky appear to move slowly even though the earth is rotating at 1,000mph?

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

Because the earth is so big. Even though we are rotating at a high speed, it still takes a decent amount of time to spin a few degrees. It takes 24 hours to spin 360 degrees, so 15 per hour, .25 per minute. Imagine spinning a basketball at a rate of once per day.