Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The point towards which the Earth in its solar orbit is directed at any given instant is known as the "apex of the Earth's way". [4] [5] From a vantage point above the north pole of either the Sun or Earth, Earth would appear to revolve in a counterclockwise direction around the Sun. From the same vantage point, both the Earth and the Sun would ...
Earth's rotation axis moves with respect to the fixed stars (inertial space); the components of this motion are precession and nutation. It also moves with respect to Earth's crust; this is called polar motion. Precession is a rotation of Earth's rotation axis, caused primarily by external torques from the gravity of the Sun, Moon and other bodies.
But it is not until a little later, at time 3, that the Sun is overhead again (1→3 = one solar day). More simply, 1→2 is a complete rotation of the Earth, but because the revolution around the Sun affects the angle at which the Sun is seen from the Earth, 1→3 is how long it takes noon to return. [Note that in this diagram, the relative ...
In this frame of reference, Earth's rotation is close to constant, but the stars appear to rotate slowly with a period of about 25,800 years. It is also in this frame of reference that the tropical year (or solar year), the year related to Earth's seasons, represents one orbit of Earth around the Sun. The precise definition of a sidereal day is ...
Earth's rotation period relative to the Sun—its mean solar day—is 86,400 seconds of mean solar time (86,400.0025 SI seconds). [156] Because Earth's solar day is now slightly longer than it was during the 19th century due to tidal deceleration , each day varies between 0 and 2 ms longer than the mean solar day.
At the equator, the solar rotation period is 24.47 days. This is called the sidereal rotation period, and should not be confused with the synodic rotation period of 26.24 days, which is the time for a fixed feature on the Sun to rotate to the same apparent position as viewed from Earth (the Earth's orbital rotation is in the same direction as the Sun's rotation).
The sidereal year differs from the solar year, "the period of time required for the ecliptic longitude of the Sun to increase 360 degrees", [2] due to the precession of the equinoxes. The sidereal year is 20 min 24.5 s longer than the mean tropical year at J2000.0 (365.242 190 402 ephemeris days). [1]
Universal Time (UT or UT1) is a time standard based on Earth's rotation. [1] While originally it was mean solar time at 0° longitude, precise measurements of the Sun are difficult. Therefore, UT1 is computed from a measure of the Earth's angle with respect to the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF), called the Earth Rotation Angle ...