Is the ecliptic the same as the Earth’s orbit around the sun?

Answer

Ecliptic, orbital plane of the earth and zodiac, it all has to do with each other

Suppose the stars are all on a spherical surface with the Sun at the center. The Earth revolves around the Sun in a near-circular orbit with a radius much smaller than the radius of the supposed star sphere. Now take the orbital plane of the Earth and enlarge it in all directions until it intersects the star sphere. That imaginary line through the starry sky is the ecliptic. That is why the orbital plane of the earth is also called the ecliptic plane. The ecliptic is therefore concretely a large circle on the celestial sphere, namely the path that our Sun takes through the starry sky once every year.

If you do the same with the equator plane of the earth, you get the celestial equator, so also a great circle on the celestial sphere. It intersects the ecliptic in two points and there they make an angle of 23°.5 with each other,

The zodiac in astronomy is a zone of approximately 9° north and south of that ecliptic. So it’s a band around us on that star sphere from just now. Because the planets do not rotate exactly in the orbital plane of the earth, but have an orbital plane that makes a small angle with it, we do not see the plants moving perfectly on the ecliptic from earth. Seen from the Sun, a planet is half its orbit a little above, and the other half a little below the ecliptic plane. As a result, the planets, and also the moon, move within a strip to the left and right (or below and above) of the ecliptic and that zone is therefore the zodiac

The sun itself moves on its annual journey along the ecliptic through 13 constellations (not 12) and the zodiac therefore contains 13 constellations. For example, she is 5 times longer in the constellation Virgo (Virgo) than in Scorpius (Scorpio).

For example, the term zodiac or zodiac is still used in science to refer to “zodiacal light”, a thin glow caused by the dust particles near the ecliptic plane.