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The March equinox itself precesses slowly westward relative to the fixed stars, completing one revolution in about 25,800 years, so the misnamed "sidereal" day ("sidereal" is derived from the Latin sidus meaning "star") is 0.0084 seconds shorter than the stellar day, Earth's actual period of rotation relative to the fixed stars. [3]
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 ...
The paradox is related to sidereal time: a sidereal day is the time Earth takes to rotate for a distant star to return to the same position in the sky, whereas a solar day is the time for the sun to return to the same position. A year has around 365.25 solar days, but 366.25 sidereal days to account for one revolution around the sun. [6]
Thus, the sidereal day is shorter than the stellar day by about 8.4 ms. [37] Both the stellar day and the sidereal day are shorter than the mean solar day by about 3 minutes 56 seconds. This is a result of the Earth turning 1 additional rotation, relative to the celestial reference frame, as it orbits the Sun (so 366.24 rotations/y).
The time for one complete rotation is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds – one sidereal day. The first experimental demonstration of this motion was conducted by Léon Foucault. Because Earth orbits the Sun once a year, the sidereal time at any given place and time will gain about four minutes against local civil time, every 24 hours ...
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 the year −2000 (2001 BCE) the May maximum was +12 minutes and a couple seconds while the November maximum was just less than 10 minutes. The secular change is evident when one compares a current graph of the equation of time (see below) with one from 2000 years ago, e.g., one constructed from the data of Ptolemy.
A sidereal day is about 4 minutes less than a solar day of 24 hours (23 hours 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds), or 0.99726968 of a solar day of 24 hours. [7] There are about 366.2422 stellar days in one mean tropical year (one stellar day more than the number of solar days). [8]