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Right ascension and declination as seen on the inside of the celestial sphere. The primary direction of the system is the March equinox, the ascending node of the ecliptic (red) on the celestial equator (blue). Right ascension is measured eastward up to 24 h along the celestial equator from the primary direction.
Sidereal time vs solar time. Above left: a distant star (the small orange star) and the Sun are at culmination, on the local meridian m. Centre: only the distant star is at culmination (a mean sidereal day). Right: a few minutes later the Sun is on the local meridian again. A solar day is complete.
Angles in the hours ( h), minutes ( m), and seconds ( s) of time measure must be converted to decimal degrees or radians before calculations are performed. 1 h = 15°; 1 m = 15′; 1 s = 15″ Angles greater than 360° (2 π ) or less than 0° may need to be reduced to the range 0°−360° (0–2 π ) depending upon the particular calculating ...
The local hour angle (LHA) of an object in the observer's sky is = or = + where LHA object is the local hour angle of the object, LST is the local sidereal time, is the object's right ascension, GST is Greenwich sidereal time and is the observer's longitude (positive east from the prime meridian). [3]
Right ascension is usually measured in sidereal hours, minutes and seconds instead of degrees, a result of the method of measuring right ascensions by timing the passage of objects across the meridian as the Earth rotates. There are 360° / 24 h = 15° in one hour of right ascension, and 24 h of right ascension around the entire ...
Sidereal time is the hour angle of the equinox. However, there are two types: if the mean equinox is used (that which only includes precession), it is called mean sidereal time; if the true equinox is used (the actual location of the equinox at a given instant), it is called apparent sidereal time.
An object's right ascension and the local sidereal time can be used to determine the time of its culmination (see hour angle). The term meridian comes from the Latin meridies, which means both "midday" and "south", as the celestial equator appears to tilt southward from the Northern Hemisphere.
It differs from the sidereal period because the object's semi-major axis typically advances slowly. Also, the tropical period of Earth (a tropical year) is the interval between two alignments of its rotational axis with the Sun, also viewed as two passages of the object at a right ascension of 0 hr.