Earth
Earth's rotation period relative to the Sun (its mean solar day) is 86,400 seconds of mean solar time. Each of these seconds is slightly longer than an SI second because Earth's solar day is now slightly longer than it was during the 19th century due to tidal acceleration. 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. The SI second was made equal to the ephemeris second in 1967.
Earth's rotation period relative to the fixed stars, called its stellar day by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), is 86164.098 903 691 seconds of mean solar time (UT1) (23 56 4.098 903 691). Earth's rotation period relative to the precessing or moving mean vernal equinox, misnamed its sidereal day, is 86164.090 530 832 88 seconds of mean solar time (UT1) (23 56 4.090 530 832 88). Thus the sidereal day is shorter than the stellar day by about 8.4 ms. The length of the mean solar day in SI seconds is available from the IERS for the periods 1623–2005 and 1962–2005. Recently (1999–2005) the average annual length of the mean solar day in excess of 86400 SI seconds has varied between 0.3 ms and 1 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.
Read more about this topic: Rotation Period
Famous quotes containing the word earth:
“The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse,—friend, foe,—in one red
burial blent!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Once the sin against God was the greatest sin, but God died, and so these sinners died as well. To sin against the earth is now the most terrible thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable more highly than the meaning of the earth.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)