TROPICAL YEAR

A tropical year (also known as a solar year), for general purposes, is the length of time
that the Sun takes to return to the same position in the cycle of seasons, as seen from
Earth; for example, the time from vernal equinox to vernal equinox, or from summer
solstice to summer solstice. Because of the precession of the equinoxes,
the seasonal cycle does not remain exactly synchronized with the position of the Earth
in its orbit around the Sun. As a consequence, the tropical year is about 20
minutes shorter than the time it takes Earth to complete one full orbit around the Sun as
measured with respect to the fixed stars (the sidereal year).
Since antiquity, astronomers have progressively refined the definition of the tropical
year, and currently define it as the time required for the mean Sun's tropical longitude
(longitudinal position along the ecliptic relative to its position at the vernal equinox) to
increase by 360 degrees (that is, to complete one full seasonal circuit). (Meeus &
Savoie, 1992, p. 40)
The mean tropical year on January 1, 2000 was 365.2421897 days, each day lasting
86,400 SI seconds.
The Gregorian calendar has an average year length of 365.2425 days, being designed
to match the northward (March) equinox year of 365.2424 days (as of January 2000).

History
Origin
The word "tropical" comes from the Greek tropikos meaning "turn". (tropic, 1992) Thus,
the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn mark the extreme north and south latitudes where
the Sun can appear directly overhead, and where it appears to "turn" in its annual
seasonal motion. Because of this connection between the tropics and the seasonal
cycle of the apparent position of the Sun, the word "tropical" also lent its name to the
"tropical year". The early Chinese, Hindus, Greeks, and others made approximate
measures of the tropical year; early astronomers did so by noting the time required
between the appearance of the Sun in one of the tropics to the next appearance in the
same tropic. (Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 40)

Early value, precession discovery

In the 2nd century BC Hipparchus introduced a new definition which was still used by
some authors in the 20th century, the time required for the Sun to travel from
an equinox to the same equinox again. He reckoned the length of the year to be 365
solar days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, 12 seconds (365.24667 days). Meeus and Savoie used
a modern computer model to find the correct value was 365 solar days, 5 hours 49
minutes 9 seconds (365.24247 mean solar days). Hipparchus adopted the new
definition because the instrument he used, the meridian armillae, was better able to
detect the more rapid motion in declination at the time of the equinoxes, compared to
the solstices. (Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 40)
Hipparchus also discovered that the equinoctial points moved along the ecliptic (plane
of the Earth's orbit, or what Hipparchus would have thought of as the plane of the Sun's
orbit about the Earth) in a direction opposite that of the movement of the Sun, a
phenomenon that came to be named "precession of the equinoxes". He reckoned the

value as 1 per century, a value that was not improved upon until about 1000 years
later, by Islamic astronomers. Since this discovery a distinction has been made between
the tropical year and the sidereal year. (Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 40)

Middle Ages and the Renaissance

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance a number of progressively better tables were
published that allowed computation of the positions of the
Sun, Moon and planets relative to the fixed stars. An important application of these
tables was the reform of the calendar.
The Alfonsine Tables, published in 1252, were based on the theories of Ptolemy and
were revised and updated after the original publication; the most recent update in 1978
was by the French National Centre for Scientific Research. The length of the tropical
year (using the equinox-based definition) was 365 solar days 5 hours 49 minutes 16
seconds (365.24255 days). It was these tables that were used in the reform process
that led to the Gregorian calendar. (Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 41)
In the 16th century Copernicus put forward a heliocentric cosmology. Erasmus Reinhold
used Copernicus' theory to compute the Prutenic Tables in 1551, and found a tropical
year length of 365 solar days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, 58 seconds (365.24720 days).
(Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 41)
Major advances in the 17th century were made by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.
In 1609 and 1619 Kepler published his three laws of planetary motion. (McCarthy &
Seidelmann, 2009, p. 26) In 1627, Kepler used the observations of Tycho Brahe and
Waltherus to produce the most accurate tables up to that time, the Rudolphine Tables.
He evaluated the mean tropical year as 365 solar days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45
seconds (365.24219 days). (Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 41)
Newton's three laws of dynamics and theory of gravity were published in
his Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. Newton's theoretical and
mathematical advances influenced tables by Edmund Halley published in 1693 and
1749 (McCarthy & Seidelmann, 2009, pp. 2628) and provided the underpinnings of all
solar system models until Albert Einstein's theory of General relativity in the 20th
century.

18th and 19th century

From the time of Hipparchus and Ptolemy, the year was based on two equinoxes (or
two solstices) a number of years apart, to average out both observational errors and the
effects of nutation (irregular motions of the axis of rotation of the earth, the main cycle
being 18.6 years) and the movement of the Sun caused by the gravitational pull of the
planets. These effects did not begin to be understood until Newton's time. To model
short term variations of the time between equinoxes (and prevent them from
confounding efforts to measure long term variations) requires either precise
observations or an elaborate theory of the motion of the Sun. The necessary theories
and mathematical tools came together in the 18th century due to the work of PierreSimon de Laplace, Joseph Louis Lagrange, and other specialists in celestial mechanics.
They were able to express the mean longitude of the Sun as
L0 = A0 + A1T + A2T2 days
where T is the time in Julian centuries. The inverse of the derivative
of L0, dT/dL0 gives the length of the tropical year as a linear function of T. When this
is computed, an expression giving the length of the tropical year as function of T
results.

Two equations are given in the table. Both equations estimate that the tropical year
gets roughly a half second shorter each century.

Tropical year coefficients

Name

Equation

Date on which T = 0

Leverrier (Meeus & Savoie,

1992, p. 42)

Y = 365.24219647
6.24106 T

January 0.5, 1900, Ephemeris

Time

Newcomb (1898, p. 910)

Y = 365.24219879
6.14106 T

January 0, 1900, mean time

Newcomb's tables were successful enough that they were used by the joint
American-British Astronomical Almanac for the Sun, Mercury, Venus,
and Mars through 1983. (Seidelmann, 1992, p. 317)

20th and 21st centuries

The length of the mean tropical year is derived from a model of the solar system, so
any advance that improves the solar system model potentially improves the
accuracy of the mean tropical year. Many new observing instruments became
available, including
artificial satellites
tracking of deep space probes such as Pioneer 4 beginning in 1959 (Jet
Propulsion Laboratory 2005)
radars able to measure other planets beginning in 1961 (Butrica, 1996)
lunar laser ranging since the 1969 Apollo 11 left the first of a series
of retroreflectors which allow greater accuracy than reflectorless measurements
artificial satellites such as LAGEOS (1976) and the Global Positioning
System (initial operation in 1993)
Very Long Baseline Interferometry which finds precise directions to quasars in
distant galaxies, and allows determination of the Earth's orientation with respect
to these objects whose distance is so great they can be considered to show
minimal space motion (McCarthy & Seidelmann, 2009, p. 265)

The complexity of the model used for the solar system must be limited to the
available computation facilities. In the 1920s punched card equipment came into use
by L. J. Comrie in Britain. At the American Ephemeris an electromagnetic computer,
the IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator was used since 1948. When
modern computers became available, it was possible to compute ephemerides
using numerical integration rather than general theories; numerical integration came
into use in 1984 for the joint US-UK almanacs. (McCarthy & Seidelmann, 2009, p.
32)

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity provided a more accurate theory, but the
accuracy of theories and observations did not require the refinement provided by
this theory (except for the advance of the perihelion of Mercury) until 1984. Time
scales incorporated general relativity beginning in the 1970s. (McCarthy &
Seidelmann, 2009, p. 37)
A key development in understanding the tropical year over long periods of time is
the discovery that the rate of rotation of the earth, or equivalently, the length of
the mean solar day, is not constant. William Ferrel in 1864 and Charles-Eugne
Delaunay in 1865 indicated the rotation of the Earth was being retarded by tides. In
1921 William H Shortt invented the Shortt-Synchronome clock, the most accurate
commercially produced pendulum clock; it was the first clock capable of measuring
variations in the Earth's rotation. The next major time-keeping advance was
the quartz clock, first built by Warren Marrison and J. W. Horton in 1927; in the late
1930s quartz clocks began to replace pendulum clocks as time standards.
(McCarthy and Seidelmann, 2009, ch. 9)
A series of experiments beginning in the late 1930s led to the development of the
first atomic clock by Louis Essen and J. V. L. Parry in 1955. Their clock was based
on a transition in the cesium atom. (McCarthy & Seidelmann, 2009, pp. 1579) Due
to the accuracy the General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960
redefined the second in terms of the cesium transition. [1] The atomic second, often
called the SI second, was intended to agree with the ephemeris second based on
Newcomb's work, which in turn makes it agree with the mean solar second of the
mid-19th century. (McCarthy & Seidelman, 2009, pp. 812, 1917)

Time scales
As mentioned in History, advances in time-keeping have resulted in various time
scales. One useful time scale is Universal Time (especially the UT1 variant), which
is the mean solar time at 0 degrees longitude (the Greenwich meridian). One
second of UT is 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. This time scale is known to be
somewhat variable. Since all civil calendars count actual solar days, all civil
calendars are based on UT.
The other time scale has two parts. Ephemeris time (ET) is the independent variable
in the equations of motion of the solar system, in particular, the equations in use
from 1960 to 1984. (McCarthy & Seidelmann, 2009, p. 378) That is, the length of the
second used in the solar system calculations could be adjusted until the length that
gives the best agreement with observations is found. With the introduction of atomic
clocks in the 1950s, it was found that ET could be better realized as atomic time.
This also means that ET is a uniform time scale, as is atomic time. ET was given a
new name, Terrestrial Time (TT), and for most purposes ET = TT = International
Atomic Time + 32.184 SI seconds. As of January 2010, TT is ahead of UT1 by about
66 seconds. (International Earth Rotation Service, 2010; McCarthy & Seidelman,
2009, pp. 867).
As explained below, long term estimates of the length of the tropical year were used
in connection with the reform of the Julian calendar, which resulted in the Gregorian
calendar. Of course the participants in that reform were unaware of the non-uniform
rotation of the Earth, but now this can be taken into account to some degree. The
amount that TT is ahead of UT1 is known as T, or Delta T. The table below gives
Morrison and Stephenson's (S & M) 2004 estimates and standard errors () for
dates significant in the process of developing the Gregorian calendar.

Event

Year

Nearest S & M Year

Julian calendar begins

44

2h56m20s

4m20s

First Council of Nicaea

325

300

2h8m

2m

Gregorian calendar begins

1583

1600

2m

20s

low precision extrapolation

4000

4h13m

low precision extrapolation

10,000

2d11h

The low precision extrapolations are computed with an expression provided by

Morrison and Stephenson
T = 20 + 32t2
where t is measured in Julian centuries from 1820. The extrapolation is provided
only to show T is not negligible when evaluating the calendar for long periods;
Borkowski (1991, p. 126) cautions that "many researchers have attempted to fit
a parabola to the measured T values in order to determine the magnitude of
the deceleration of the Earth's rotation. The results, when taken together, are
rather discouraging."

Length of tropical year

An oversimplified definition of the tropical year would be the time required for the Sun,
beginning at a chosen ecliptic longitude, to make one complete cycle of the seasons
and return to the same ecliptic longitude. Before considering an example, the equinox
must be examined. There are two important planes in solar system calculations, the
plane of the ecliptic (the Earth's orbit around the Sun), and the plane of the celestial
equator (the Earth's equator projected into space). These two planes intersect in a line.
The direction along the line from the Earth in the general direction of the zodiac
sign Aries (Ram) is the Northward equinox, and is given the symbol (the symbol
looks like the horns of aram).
The opposite direction, along the line in the general direction of the sign Libra, is the
Southward equinox and is given the symbol . Because of precession and nutation
these directions change, compared to the direction of distant stars and galaxies, whose
directions have no measurable motion due to their great distance (see International
Celestial Reference Frame).
The ecliptic longitude of the Sun is the angle between and the Sun, measured
eastward along the ecliptic. This creates a complicated measurement, because as the

Sun is moving, the direction the angle is measured from is also moving. It is convenient
to have a fixed (with respect to distant stars) direction to measure from; the direction of
at noon January 1, 2000 fills this role and is given the symbol 0.
Using the oversimplified definition, there was an equinox on March 20, 2009, 11:44:43.6
TT. The 2010 March equinox was March 20, 17:33:18.1 TT, which gives a duration of
365 d 5 h 49 m 30s. (Astronomical Applications Dept., 2009) While the Sun moves,
moves in the opposite direction . When the Sun and met at the 2010 March equinox,
the Sun had moved east 35959'09" while had moved west 51" for a total of 360 (all
with respect to 0). (Seidelmann, 1992, p. 104, expression for pA)
If a different starting longitude for the Sun is chosen, the duration for the Sun to return to
the same longitude will be different. This is because although changes at a nearly
steady rate[2] there is considerable variation in the angular speed of the Sun. Thus, the
50 or so arcseconds that the Sun does not have to move to complete the tropical year
"saves" varying amounts of time depending on the position in the orbit.

Mean equinox tropical year

As already mentioned, there is some choice in the length of the tropical year depending
on the point of reference that one selects. But during the period when return of the Sun
to a chosen longitude was the method in use by astronomers, one of the equinoxes was
usually chosen because the instruments were most sensitive there. When tropical year
measurements from several successive years are compared, variations are found which
are due to nutation, and to the planetary perturbations acting on the Sun. Meeus and
Savoie (1992, p. 41) provided the following examples of intervals between northward
equinoxes:
days

hours

Min

19851986

365

48

58

19861987

365

49

15

19871988

365

46

38

19881989

365

49

42

19891990

365

51

06

Until the beginning of the 19th century, the length of the tropical year was found by
comparing equinox dates that were separated by many years; this approach yielded
the meantropical year. (Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 42)
Values of mean time intervals between equinoxes and solstices were provided by
Meeus and Savoie (1992, p. 42) for the years 0 and 2000.

Year 0

Year 2000

Between two Northward equinoxes

365.242137 days

365.242374 days

Between two Northern solstices

365.241726

365.241626

Between two Southward equinoxes

365.242496

365.242018

Between two Southern solstices

365.242883

365.242740

Mean tropical year

(Laskar's expression)

365.242310

365.242189

Mean tropical year current value

The mean tropical year on January 1, 2000 was 365.2421897 or 365 days, 5 hours, 48
minutes, 45.19 seconds. This changes slowly; an expression suitable for calculating the
length in days for the distant past is
365.2421896698 6.15359106T 7.291010T2 + 2.641010T3
where T is in Julian centuries of 36,525 days measured from noon January 1, 2000 TT
(in negative numbers for dates in the past). (McCarthy & Seidelmann, 2009, p. 18.;
Laskar, 1986)
Modern astronomers define the tropical year as time for the Sun's mean longitude to
increase by 360. The process for finding an expression for the length of the tropical
year is to first find an expression for the Sun's mean longitude (with respect to ), such
as Newcomb's expression given above, or Laskar's expression (1986, p. 64). When
viewed over a 1 year period, the mean longitude is very nearly a linear function of
Terrestrial Time. To find the length of the tropical year, the mean longitude is
differentiated, to give the angular speed of the Sun as a function of Terrestrial Time, and
this angular speed is used to compute how long it would take for the Sun to move 360.
(Meeus & Savoie, 1992, p. 42).

Calendar year
The Gregorian calendar, as used for civil purposes, is an international standard. It is a
solar calendar that is designed to maintain synchrony with the vernal equinox tropical
year.[3] It has a cycle of 400 years (146,097 days). Each cycle repeats the months,
dates, and weekdays. The average year length is 146,097/400 = 365+97/400 =
365.2425 days per year, a close approximation to the mean tropical year, and an even
closer approximation to the current vernal equinox tropical year. (Seidelmann, 1992, pp.
57681)
The Gregorian calendar is a reformed version of the Julian calendar. By the time of the
reform in 1582, the date of the vernal equinox had shifted about 10 days, from about
March 21 at the time of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, to about March 11. According
to North, the real motivation for reform was not primarily a matter of getting agricultural
cycles back to where they had once been in the seasonal cycle; the primary concern of
Christians was the correct observance of Easter. The rules used to compute the date of
Easter used a conventional date for the vernal equinox (March 21), and it was
considered important to keep March 21 close to the actual equinox. (North, 1983, pp.
7576)
If society in the future still attaches importance to the synchronization between the civil
calendar and the seasons, another reform of the calendar will eventually be necessary.
According to Blackburn and Holford-Strevens (who used Newcomb's value for the
tropical year) if the tropical year remained at its 1900 value of 365.24219878125 days
the Gregorian calendar would be 3 days, 17 min, 33 s behind the Sun after 10,000
years. Aggravating this error, the length of the tropical year (measured in Terrestrial
Time) is decreasing at a rate of approximately 0.53 s per 100 tropical years. Also, the
mean solar day is getting longer at a rate of about 1.5 ms per 100 tropical years. These
effects will cause the calendar to be nearly a day behind in 3200. A possible reform
would be to omit the leap day in 3200, keep 3600 and 4000 as leap years, and
thereafter make all centennial years common except 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, etc. The
effects are not sufficiently predictable to form more precise proposals. (Blackburn &
Holford-Strevens, 2003, p. 692)
Borkowski (1991, p. 121) states "because of high uncertainty in the Earth's rotation it is
premature at present to suggest any reform that would reach further than a few
thousand years into the future." He estimates that in 4000 the Gregorian year (which
counts actual solar days) will be behind the tropical year by 0.8 to 1.1 days. (p. 126)

EARTH'S ROTATION

An animation showing the rotation of the Earth around its own axis.

Southern night sky over the Residencia hotel at ESOs Paranal Observatory in Chile

Earth's rotation is the rotation of the solid Earth around its own axis. The Earth rotates
from the west towards the east. As viewed from the North Star or polestar Polaris, the
Earth turns counter-clockwise.
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is
the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its
surface. This point is distinct from the Earth's North Magnetic Pole. The South Pole is
the other point where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface, in Antarctica.
The Earth rotates once in about 24 hours with respect to the sun and once every 23
hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds with respect to the stars (see below). Earth's rotation is
slowing slightly with time; thus, a day was shorter in the past. This is due to the tidal
effects the Moonhas on Earth's rotation. Atomic clocks show that a modern day is
longer by about 1.7 milliseconds than a century ago,[2] slowly increasing the rate at
which UTC is adjusted by leap seconds.

History
Among the ancient Greeks, several of the Pythagorean school believed in the rotation of
the earth rather than the apparent diurnal rotation of the heavens. The first

was Philolaus(470-385 BCE) though his system was complicated, including a counterearth rotating daily about a central fire.[3]
A more conventional picture was that supported
by Hicetas, Heraclides and Ecphantus in the fourth century BCE who assumed that the
earth rotated but did not suggest that the earth revolved about the sun. In the third
century, Aristarchus of Samos suggested the sun's central place.
However, Aristotle in the fourth century criticized the ideas of Philolaus as being based
on theory rather than observation. He established the idea of a sphere of fixed stars that
rotated about the earth.[4] This was accepted by most of those who came after, in
particular Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century CE), who thought the earth would be
devastated by gales if it rotated.[5]
In 499 CE, the Indian astronomer Aryabhata wrote that the spherical earth rotates about
its axis daily, and that the apparent movement of the stars is a relative motion caused
by the rotation of the earth. He provided the following analogy: "Just as a man in a boat
going in one direction sees the stationary things on the bank as moving in the opposite
direction, in the same way to a man at Lanka the xed stars appear to be going
westward."[6][7]
In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas accepted Aristotle's view[8] and so, reluctantly,
did John Buridan[9] and Nicole Oresme[10] in the fourteenth century. Not until Nicolaus
Copernicus in 1543 adopted a heliocentric world system did the earth's rotation begin to
be established. Copernicus pointed out that if the movement of the earth is violent, then
the movement of the stars must be very much more so. He acknowledged the
contribution of the Pythagoreans and pointed to examples of relative motion. For
Copernicus this was the first step in establishing the simpler pattern of planets circling a
central sun.[11]
This was not accepted immediately even by many astronomers due to the widespread
conformance to Aristotle and the Bible. Tycho Brahe, who produced accurate
observations on which Kepler based his laws, used Copernicus's work as the basis of
a system assuming a stationary earth. In 1600, William Gilbert strongly supported the
earth's rotation in his treatise on the earth's magnetism [12] and thereby influenced many
of his contemporaries.[13] Those like Gilbert who did not openly support or reject the
motion of the earth about the sun are often called "semi-Copernicans". [14] A century after
Copernicus, Riccioli disputed the model of a rotating earth due to the lack of thenobservable eastward deflections in falling bodies; [15] such deflections would later be
called the Coriolis effect. However, the contributions of
Kepler, Galileo and Newton gathered support for the theory of the rotation of the Earth.

Empirical tests
The earth's rotation implies that the equator bulges and the poles are flattened. In
his Principia, Newton predicted this flattening would occur in the ratio of 1:230, and
pointed to the 1673 pendulum measurements by Richer as corroboration of the change
in gravity,[16] but initial measurements of meridian lengths by Picard and Cassini at the

end of the 17th century suggested the opposite. However measurements

by Maupertuis and the French Geodetic Mission in the 1730s established the flattening,
thus confirming both Newton and the Copernican position. [17]
In the Earth's rotating frame of reference, a freely moving body follows an apparent path
that deviates from the one it would follow in a fixed frame of reference. Because of
thisCoriolis effect, falling bodies veer slightly eastward from the vertical plumb line
below their point of release, and projectiles veer right in the northern hemisphere (and
left in the southern) from the direction in which they are shot. The Coriolis effect is
mainly observable at a meteorological scale, where it is responsible for the differing
rotation direction ofcyclones in the northern and southern hemispheres.
Hooke, following a 1679 suggestion from Newton, tried unsuccessfully to verify the
predicted eastward deviation of a body dropped from a height of 8.2 meters, but
definitive results were only obtained later, in the late 18th and early 19th century,
by Giovanni Battista Guglielmini in Bologna, Johann Friedrich
Benzenberg in Hamburg and Ferdinand Reich in Freiberg, using taller towers and
carefully released weights.[n 1] A ball dropped from a height of 158.5 m (520 ft) departed
by 27.4 mm (1.08 in) from the vertical compared with a calculated value of 28.1 mm
(1.11 in).
The most celebrated test of Earth's rotation is the Foucault pendulum first built by
physicist Lon Foucault in 1851, which consisted of a lead-filled brass sphere
suspended 67 mfrom the top of the Panthon in Paris. Because of the Earth's rotation
under the swinging pendulum, the pendulum's plane of oscillation appears to rotate at a
rate depending on latitude. At the latitude of Paris the predicted and observed shift was
about 11 degrees clockwise per hour. Foucault pendulums now swing in museums
around the world.

Rotation period

A 3571 second exposure of the northern sky.

True solar day

Earth's rotation period relative to the Sun (true noon to true noon) is its true solar
day or apparent solar day. It depends on the Earth's orbital motion and is thus affected
by changes in the eccentricity and inclination of Earth's orbit. Both vary over thousands

of years so the annual variation of the true solar day also varies. Generally, it is longer
than the mean solar day during two periods of the year and shorter during another two. [n
2]
The true solar day tends to be longer near perihelion when the Sun apparently moves
along the ecliptic through a greater angle than usual, taking about 10 seconds longer to
do so. Conversely, it is about 10 seconds shorter near aphelion. It is about20
seconds longer near a solstice when the projection of the Sun's apparent movement
along the ecliptic onto the celestial equatorcauses the Sun to move through a greater
angle than usual. Conversely, near an equinox the projection onto the equator is shorter
by about 20 seconds. Currently, the perihelion and solstice effects combine to lengthen
the true solar day near December 22 by 30 meansolar seconds, but the solstice effect is
partially cancelled by the aphelion effect near June 19 when it is only 13
seconds longer. The effects of the equinoxes shorten it nearMarch 26 and September
16 by 18 seconds and 21 seconds, respectively.[18][19][20]

Mean solar day

The average of the true solar day during the course of an entire year is the mean solar
day, which contains 86,400 mean solar seconds. Currently, each of these seconds is
slightly longer than an SI second because Earth's mean solar day is now slightly longer
than it was during the 19th century due to tidal friction. The average length of the mean
solar day since the introduction of the leap second in 1972 has been about 0 to 2 ms
longer than 86,400 SI seconds.[21][22][23] Random fluctuations due to core-mantle coupling
have an amplitude of about 5 ms.[24][25] The mean solar second between 1750 and 1892
was chosen in 1895 by Simon Newcomb as the independent unit of time in his Tables of
the Sun. These tables were used to calculate the world's ephemerides between 1900
and 1983, so this second became known as the ephemeris second. In 1967 the SI
second was made equal to the ephemeris second. [26]
The apparent solar time is a measure of the Earth's rotation and the difference between
it and the mean solar time is known as the equation of time.

Stellar and sidereal day

On a prograde planet like the Earth, the stellar 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 but the Sun is not (12 = one stellar day). It is not until a little
later, at time 3, that the Sun is overhead again (13 = one solar day).

Earth's rotation period relative to the fixed stars, called its stellar day by the International
Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service(IERS), is 86,164.098 903 691 seconds
of mean solar time (UT1) (23h 56m 4.098 903 691s, 0.997 269 663 237 16 mean solar
days).[27][n 3] Earth's rotation period relative to the precessing or moving mean vernal
equinox, named sidereal day, is86,164.090 530 832 88 seconds of mean solar time
(UT1) (23h 56m 4.090 530 832 88s, 0.997 269 566 329 08 mean solar days).[27] Thus the
sidereal day is shorter than the stellar day by about 8.4 ms.[29]
Both the stellar day and the sidereal day are shorter than the mean solar day by about 3
minutes 56 seconds. The mean solar day in SI seconds is available from the IERS for
the periods 16232005[30] and 19622005.[31]
Recently (19992010) the average annual length of the mean solar day in excess of
86,400 SI seconds has varied between 0.25 ms and1 ms, which must be added to both
the stellar and sidereal days given in mean solar time above to obtain their lengths in SI
seconds (seeFluctuations in the length of day).

Angular speed
The angular speed of Earth's rotation in inertial space is (7.2921150
0.0000001) 105 radians per SI second (mean solar second).[27]Multiplying by (180/
radians)(86,400 seconds/mean solar day) yields 360.9856/mean solar day, indicating
that Earth rotates more than 360 relative to the fixed stars in one solar day. Earth's
movement along its nearly circular orbit while it is rotating once around its axis requires
that Earth rotate slightly more than once relative to the fixed stars before the mean Sun
can pass overhead again, even though it rotates only once (360) relative to the mean
Sun.[n 4] Multiplying the value in rad/s by Earth's equatorial radius of 6,378,137
m (WGS84 ellipsoid) (factors of 2 radians needed by both cancel) yields an equatorial
speed of 465.1 m/s, 1,674.4 km/h or 1,040.4 mi/h.[32] Some sources state that Earth's
equatorial speed is slightly less, or1,669.8 km/h.[33] This is obtained by dividing Earth's
equatorial circumference by 24 hours. However, the use of only one circumference
unwittingly implies only one rotation in inertial space, so the corresponding time unit
must be a sidereal hour. This is confirmed by multiplying by the number of sidereal days
in one mean solar day,1.002 737 909 350 795,[27] which yields the equatorial speed in
mean solar hours given above of 1,674.4 km/h.
The tangential speed of Earth's rotation at a point on Earth can be approximated by
multiplying the speed at the equator by the cosine of the latitude. [34] For example, the
Kennedy Space Center is located at 28.59 North latitude, which yields a speed of:
1,674.4 kilometres per hour (1,040.4 mph) cos (28.59) = 1,470.23 kilometres per hour
(913.56 mph)

Changes in rotation

Earth's axial tilt (or obliquity) and its relation to the rotation axis and plane of orbit as viewed
from the Sun during theNorthward equinox.

Deviation of day length from SI based day, 19622010

The Earth's rotation axis moves with respect to the fixed stars (inertial space); the
components of this motion are precession and nutation. The Earth's crust also moves
with respect to the Earth's rotation axis; this is called polar motion.
Precession is a rotation of the Earth's rotation axis, caused primarily by external torques
from the gravity of the Sun, Moon and other bodies. The polar motion is primarily due
to free core nutationand the Chandler wobble.
Over millions of years, the rotation is significantly slowed by gravitational interactions
with the Moon; both rotational energy and angular momentum are being slowly
transferred to the Moon: see tidal acceleration. However some large scale events, such
as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, have caused the rotation to speed up by around
3 microseconds by affecting the Earth's moment of inertia. [35] Post-glacial rebound,
ongoing since the last Ice age, is also changing the distribution of the Earth's mass thus
affecting the moment of inertia of the Earth and, by the conservation of angular
momentum, the Earth's rotation period.[36]

Measurement
The permanent monitoring of the Earth's rotation is done these days via very-longbaseline interferometry coordinated with the Global Positioning System, satellite laser
ranging, and other satellite techniques. This provides an absolute reference for the
determination of universal time, precession, and nutation.[37]

Origin

An artist's rendering of the protoplanetary disk.

That the Earth rotates is a vestige of the original angular momentum of the cloud
of dust, rocks, and gas that coalesced to form the Solar System. This primordial cloud
was composed of hydrogen and helium produced in the Big Bang, as well as
heavier elements ejected bysupernovas. As this interstellar dust is inhomogeneous, any
asymmetry during gravitational accretion results in the angular momentum of the
eventual planet.[38] The current rotation period of the Earth is the result of this initial
rotation and other factors, including tidal friction and the hypothetical impact of Theia.

SIDEREAL YEAR
A sidereal year is the time taken by the Earth to orbit the Sun once with respect to
the fixed stars. Hence it is also the time taken for the Sun to return to the same position
with respect to the fixed stars after apparently travelling once around the ecliptic. This
differs from the solar or tropical year which has length equal to the time interval between
vernal equinoxes in successive years. It was equal to 365.256363004 SI days[1] at noon
1 January 2000 (J2000.0). This is 6 hours and 9.1626 minutes longer than the standard
calendar year of 365 SI days, and 20 min 24.5128 s longer than the mean tropical
year at J2000.0.[1] The word "sidereal" is derived from the Latin sidus meaning "star".

Apparent motion of the Sun against the stars

As the Earth orbits the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun against the stars gradually
moves along the ecliptic, passing through the twelve traditional constellations of
thezodiac, and returning to its starting point after one sidereal year. This motion is
difficult to observe directly because the stars cannot be seen when the Sun is in the sky.
However, if one looks regularly at the sky before dawn, the annual motion is very
noticeable: the last stars seen to rise are not always the same, and within a week or two
an upward shift can be noted. As an example, in July in the Northern
Hemisphere, Orion cannot be seen in the dawn sky, but in August it becomes visible.
This effect is easier to measure than the north/south movement of the position of
sunrise (except in high-latitude regions), which defines the seasonal cycle and
the tropical yearon which the Gregorian calendar is based. For this reason many
cultures started their year on the first day a particular special star (Sirius, for instance)
could be seen in the east at dawn. In Hesiod's Works and Days, the times of the year
for sowing, harvest, and so on are given by reference to the first visibility of stars. Such
a calendar effectively uses the sidereal year.
The Greek astronomer Hipparchus is regarded as the one who defined precession.
Therefore, it is believed that, before Hipparchus, the years measured by the stars
(sidereal years) were thought to be the same as years measured by the seasons
(tropical years). Many ancient cultures seem to have discovered the phenomenon of the
precession, forming the basis for various world-age myths.