The Earth’s rotation causes the stars and the Sun to appear to rise each day in the east and set in the west. The apparent solar day is measured by the interval of time between two successive passages of the Sun across the observer’s celestial meridian, the visible half of the great circle that passes through the zenith and the celestial poles. One sidereal day (very nearly) is measured by the interval of time between two similar passages of a star. Fuller treatments of astronomical reference points and planes are given in the articles astronomical map; and celestial mechanics.
The plane in which the Earth orbits about the Sun is called the ecliptic. As seen from the Earth, the Sun moves eastward on the ecliptic 360° per year, almost one degree per day. As a result, an apparent solar day is nearly four minutes longer, on the average, than a sidereal day. The difference varies, however, from 3 minutes 35 seconds to 4 minutes 26 seconds during the year because of the ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit, in which at different times of the year it moves at slightly different rates, and because of the 23 1/2° inclination of the ecliptic to the Equator. In consequence, apparent solar time is nonuniform with respect to dynamical time. A sundial indicates apparent solar time.
The introduction of the pendulum as a timekeeping element to clocks during the 17th century increased their accuracy greatly and enabled more precise values for the equation of time to be determined. This development led to mean solar time as the norm; it is defined below. The difference between apparent solar time and mean solar time, called the equation of time, varies from zero to about 16 minutes.
The measures of sidereal, apparent solar, and mean solar time are defined by the hour angles of certain points, real or fictitious, in the sky. Hour angle is the angle, taken to be positive to the west, measured along the celestial equator between an observer’s meridian and the hour circle on which some celestial point or object lies. Hour angles are measured from zero through 24 hours.
Sidereal time is the hour angle of the vernal equinox, a reference point that is one of the two intersections of the celestial equator and the ecliptic. Because of a small periodic oscillation, or wobble, of the Earth’s axis, called nutation, there is a distinction between the true and mean equinoxes. The difference between true and mean sidereal times, defined by the two equinoxes, varies from zero to about one second.
Apparent solar time is the hour angle of the centre of the true Sun plus 12 hours. Mean solar time is 12 hours plus the hour angle of the centre of the fictitious mean Sun. This is a point that moves along the celestial equator with constant speed and that coincides with the true Sun on the average. In practice, mean solar time is not obtained from observations of the Sun. Instead, sidereal time is determined from observations of the transit across the meridian of stars, and the result is transformed by means of a quadratic formula to obtain mean solar time.
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