Time Standards Based On Earth Rotation
Apparent solar time ('apparent' is often used in English-language sources, but 'true' in French astronomical literature) is based on the solar day, which is the period between one solar noon (passage of the real Sun across the meridian) and the next. A solar day is approximately 24 hours of mean time. Because the Earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical, and because of the obliquity of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of the orbit (the ecliptic), the apparent solar day varies a few dozen seconds above or below the mean value of 24 hours. As the variation accumulates over a few weeks, there are differences as large as 16 minutes between apparent solar time and mean solar time (see Equation of time). However, these variations cancel out over a year. There are also other perturbations such as Earth's wobble, but these are less than a second per year.
Sidereal time is time by the stars. A sidereal rotation is the time it takes the Earth to make one revolution with respect to the stars, approximately 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds. For accurate astronomical work on land, it was usual to observe sidereal time rather than solar time to measure mean solar time, because the observations of 'fixed' stars could be measured and reduced more accurately than observations of the Sun (in spite of the need to make various small compensations, for refraction, aberration, precession, nutation and proper motion). It is well known that observations of the Sun pose substantial obstacles to the achievement of accuracy in measurement. In former times, before the distribution of accurate time signals, it was part of the routine work at any observatory to observe the sidereal times of meridian transit of selected 'clock stars' (of well-known position and movement), and to use these to correct observatory clocks running local mean sidereal time; but nowadays local sidereal time is usually generated by computer, based on time signals.
Mean solar time was originally apparent solar time corrected by the equation of time. Mean solar time was sometimes derived, especially at sea for navigational purposes, by observing apparent solar time and then adding to it a calculated correction, the equation of time, which compensated for two known irregularities, caused by the ellipticity of the Earth's orbit and the obliquity of the Earth's equator and polar axis to the ecliptic (which is the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun).
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was originally mean time deduced from meridian observations made at the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO). The principal meridian of that observatory was chosen in 1884 by the International Meridian Conference to be the Prime Meridian. GMT either by that name or as 'mean time at Greenwich' used to be an international time standard, but is no longer so; it was initially renamed in 1928 as Universal Time (UT) (partly as a result of ambiguities arising from the changed practice of starting the astronomical day at midnight instead of at noon, adopted as from 1 January 1925). The more current refined version of UT, UT1, is still in reality mean time at Greenwich. Greenwich Mean Time is still the legal time in the UK (in winter, and as adjusted by one hour for summer time). But Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) (an atomic-based time scale which is always kept within 0.9 second of UT1) is in common actual use in the UK, and the name GMT is often inaccurately used to refer to it. (See articles Greenwich Mean Time, Universal Time, Coordinated Universal Time and the sources they cite.)
Universal Time (UT) is a time scale based on the mean solar day, defined to be as uniform as possible despite variations in Earth's rotation.
- UT0 is the rotational time of a particular place of observation. It is observed as the diurnal motion of stars or extraterrestrial radio sources.
- UT1 is computed by correcting UT0 for the effect of polar motion on the longitude of the observing site. It varies from uniformity because of the irregularities in Earth's rotation.
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—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. quoted in: London Sunday Correspondent Magazine (Dec. 24, 1989)
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—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)