OttoHart
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- Joined
- Jun 26, 2024
- Messages
- 265
This is a fun thing that I thought about, that honestly impressed me. I was studying astrophysics and ran into a concept I already did loosely know, but studied it a bit more: how days work.
A day is the amount of time required for the Earth to complete a full rotation. However, the Earth makes a full rotation in varying amounts of time depending on your refference point. The two Ancient ways to track a day were very accurate, sundials and using the stars.
When comparing the Earth's rotation to any point in space, usually a star, the rotation takes roughly 23.9 hours to complete, roughly. This is what is considered a sidereal day. A fixed day that we can use for calculations. However, no one on Earth has actually experienced a sidereal day.
The Earth rotates around the Sun in an eliptic way, and it rotates around itself with a very slight tilt. Those two things result in a phenomenon where, depending on where the Earth is relative to the Sun, and where you are on the Earth, you will experience a varying amount of time to perceive a full rotation of the Earth, sunrise to sunrise. It is actually slightly longer, little over 24 hours, and it varies by about 2 minutes.
Depending on the times, there can be bigger differences between days, up to even 7 minutes ages ago. Nowadays, the biggest differences perceived are about 2 minutes.
However, the single longest rotation that can be perceived on Earth is in the Northern hemisphere, above the point of Berlin, on the 23rd of December.
A day is the amount of time required for the Earth to complete a full rotation. However, the Earth makes a full rotation in varying amounts of time depending on your refference point. The two Ancient ways to track a day were very accurate, sundials and using the stars.
When comparing the Earth's rotation to any point in space, usually a star, the rotation takes roughly 23.9 hours to complete, roughly. This is what is considered a sidereal day. A fixed day that we can use for calculations. However, no one on Earth has actually experienced a sidereal day.
The Earth rotates around the Sun in an eliptic way, and it rotates around itself with a very slight tilt. Those two things result in a phenomenon where, depending on where the Earth is relative to the Sun, and where you are on the Earth, you will experience a varying amount of time to perceive a full rotation of the Earth, sunrise to sunrise. It is actually slightly longer, little over 24 hours, and it varies by about 2 minutes.
Depending on the times, there can be bigger differences between days, up to even 7 minutes ages ago. Nowadays, the biggest differences perceived are about 2 minutes.
However, the single longest rotation that can be perceived on Earth is in the Northern hemisphere, above the point of Berlin, on the 23rd of December.
