Word of the Day: Ecliptic

Okay, it's 2075 and the space cadets are in the Terra Space Station, above the:

...90th meridian, to be exact. Their orbit lies in the ecliptic, the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, rather than in the plane of the Earth's equator. This results in them swinging north and south each day as seen from the earth. When it is noon in the Middle West, Terra Station and the [school ship] Randolf lie over the Gulf of Mexico; at midnight they lie over the South Pacific.

Got that?

The plane of the ecliptic is well seen in this picture from the 1994 lunar prospecting Clementine spacecraft. Clementine's camera reveals (from right to left) the Moon lit by Earthshine, the Sun's glare rising over the Moon's dark limb, and the planets Saturn, Mars and Mercury (the three dots at lower left).

The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun traces out in the sky during the year.

Even with pics and gentle explanation it's still gonna take me a minute to figure this out. But look at Saturn, Mars and Mercury over there. Sweet. Can't see that from the back yard. Where's Uranus?