If Earth makes one complete rotation on its axis every 23 hours and 56 minutes, how does day and night not being flipped on our clocks after six months? (6monthx30dayx4min/60=12hour)

Question

And why leap year happens once per 4 years only to address this?

In: 1081

Answer 1

It does.

You’re comparing a solar day with a sidereal day.

The difference is in how you define the start and finish of the day.

In a solar day, you track how long it takes for the sun to get to the same point in the sky. It takes 24h00m

A sidereal day is the same thing, but with a star, not the sun. That’s the 23h56m.

Because the Earth is orbiting the sun, the relative position between the Earth, sun, and rest of the stars changes constantly.

It also explains why you can only see constellations half of the year.