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More exactly, sidereal time is the angle, measured along the celestial equator, from the observer's meridian to the great circle that passes through the March equinox (the northern hemisphere's vernal equinox) and both celestial poles, and is usually expressed in hours, minutes, and seconds. (In the context of sidereal time, "March equinox" or ...
On a prograde planet like the Earth, the sidereal day is shorter than the solar day. At time 1, the Sun and a certain distant star are both overhead. At time 2, the planet has rotated 360° and the distant star is overhead again (1→2 = one sidereal day). 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 ...
It is caused by Earth's rotation around its axis, so almost every star appears to follow a circular arc path, called the diurnal circle, [1] often depicted in star trail photography. The time for one complete rotation is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds – one sidereal day.
Subdivisions of the day include the hour (1/24 of a day), which is further subdivided into minutes and seconds. The second is the international standard unit (SI unit) for science. Celestial sphere-based: as in sidereal time, where the apparent movement of the stars and constellations across the sky is used to calculate the length of a year.
English: Earth physically rotates in 23hours 56min relative to distant stars – a Sidereal Day, BUT it takes 24hours to rotate relative to the Sun – a Solar Day The difference? Earth orbits the Sun, so the Sun appears to move (down, in the vid), which means Earth needs +4mins to catch up!
In astronomy, the rotation period or spin period [1] of a celestial object (e.g., star, planet, moon, asteroid) has two definitions. The first one corresponds to the sidereal rotation period (or sidereal day), i.e., the time that the object takes to complete a full rotation around its axis relative to the background stars (inertial space).
It uses the day as the base unit, and smaller units being fractions of a day: a metric hour (deci) is 1 ⁄ 10 of a day; a metric minute (milli) is 1 ⁄ 1000 of a day; etc. [16] Similarly, in decimal time, the length of a day is static to normal time. A day is also split into 10 hours, and 10 days comprise a décade – the equivalent of a ...
A synodic day (or synodic rotation period or solar day) is the period for a celestial object to rotate once in relation to the star it is orbiting, and is the basis of solar time. The synodic day is distinguished from the sidereal day, which is one complete rotation in relation to distant stars [1] and is the basis of sidereal time.