The Earth fully rotates in 23 hours and 56 minutes. Where do those extra four minutes go??
I know the answer is supposedly leap day, but I still don’t understand it from a daily time perspective.
I have to be up early for my job, which right now sucks because it’s dark out that early. So every day I’ve been checking my weather app to see when the sun is going to rise, and every day its a minute or two earlier because we’re coming out of winter. But how the heck does that work if there’s a missing four minutes every night?? Shouldn’t the sun be rising even earlier, or later? And how does it not add up to the point where noon is nighttime??
It hurts my head so much please help me understand.
In: Earth Science
Why doesn’t the sun move 4 minutes per day? Because the stars do! The earth spins once every 23h 56m compared to distant stars. But the earth also orbits around the sun. So during that time it’s also moved along its orbit by one day. So it needs an extra 4 minutes of spin for you to see the sun in the same place in the sky. And this is why the stars move 4 minutes per day. And why the stars have seasons. Each part of the year the night side of the earth is facing outward from the solar system in a new direction.
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