How many minutes in a year

A minute is a time unit commonly used for various reasons such as telling time or in cooking. They are used every day to help us with timescales. They are divided into seconds and then multiplied to get the time in hours. A year is a unit of time measurement used in the long-term. It is divided into weeks and then multiplied into months. It determines the amount of time that has passed on a larger scale than days and weeks.

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We're moving around the Sun over the course of the year, so we have to add a few more minutes to account for that. The four minutes are relevant for things like satellites, which only care about rotation around and of the planet, but for calendar use they are not important as our calendar is based upon where the sun is in the sky.

All this means that you can safely ignore the sidereal day for most purposes; as such, the four minute difference has nothing to do with leap seconds and such, which are all defined in terms of solar days. This is basically "random"; there is no substantial link between the length of a day and the length of a year; we're spinning as we go around the sun, and it would be quite the co-incidence if we happened to be back to exactly where we started in spin at the same time we're back where we started in orbit.

This actually can and does happen as a result of orbital resonances, the most famous example being the moon which is almost completely tidally locked. But hey. My teacher said that the 44 minutes we gain from the solar day being longer than the sidereal day caused the 0. Less waffly summary from Wikipedia article on Sidereal Time :. Sidereal time is a time-keeping system. It is used by astronomers to find celestial objects. Using sidereal time it is possible to point a telescope to the proper coordinates in the night sky.

Sidereal time is a "time scale based on Earth's rate of rotation measured relative to the fixed stars". Because the Earth moves in its orbit about the Sun, a mean solar day is about four minutes longer than a sidereal day.

Thus, a star appears to rise four minutes earlier each night, compared to solar time. Different stars are visible at different times of the year. By contrast, solar time is reckoned by the movement of the Earth from the perspective of the Sun.

An average solar day 24 hours is longer than a sidereal day 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds because of the amount the Earth moves each day in its orbit around the Sun. There are also some good existing answers on Stack Exchange that say the same thing in different ways so, if you read them all, you'll have got it!

One astronomical year is the amount of time it takes the earth to complete an entire revolution around the sun. During that time, the earth spins on its axis approximately This creates an illusion, as seen from the surface of the earth, of the distant stars revolving around the earth, in an east-to-west direction, The sun, of course, also appears to revolve around the earth, in an east-to-west direction, but not quite as quickly as the distant stars.

Because of the revolution of the earth around the sun, the direction of the line joining the earth to the sun changes a little every day, which causes the apparent position of the sun relative to the distant stars to change a little every day. In an entire astronomical year, these small changes add up to one complete rotation - in other words, the distant stars appear to "lap" the sun in their progression around the earth, exactly once per astronomical year.

We conclude from that that the sun appears to revolve around the earth A sidereal day is the amount of time that it takes for the distant stars to appear to revolve once around the earth. A solar day is the amount of time that it takes for the sun to appear to revolve once around the earth. This is an average - solar days can actually be up to almost half a minute longer or shorter than 24 hours. But our time system is based on a "day" that's equal to the average solar day - obviously 24 hours - and therefore we can say that an astronomical year is approximately In general, a solar day is either slightly more or slightly less than 24 hours, and it varies according to the time of year.

There are two different causes for this variation, one with a period of a year, and one with a period of half a year. The two causes sometimes reinforce each other, and sometimes partly cancel each other out.

The first reason for a variation in the length of a solar day is the slight tilt between the equator and the earth's orbit. This causes the apparent direction of the sun's path across the backdrop of distant stars to vary slightly. At the solstices June and December , its direction is west-to-east, relative to the distant stars, but at other times of the year, there is either a slight northward or slight southward component to the sun's apparent trajectory.

What this means is that at the solstices, the apparent position of the sun is retreating directly from the apparent trajectories of the distant stars, which means they are "overtaking" the sun most quickly at that time; and less quickly at other times, when the apparent position of the sun is retreating at more of an angle towards the north or south.

The effect of this is to lengthen the solar day slightly close to the solstices particularly in June and December and to shorten the solar day slightly close to the equinoxes particularly in March and September. The second reason for a variation in the length of a solar day is the ellipticity of the earth's orbit. The earth does not maintain a constant distance from the sun. It reaches its maximum distance in early July, after which the sun's gravity starts to pull it in.

So for the second half of the calendar year, the earth is getting closer and closer to the sun, and also increasing in its speed around the sun. It reaches its closest approach to the sun in early January, then starts to move outwards again, with the sun pulling it back all the time, and slowing it down. Therefore, its closest approach is also the time when the earth is travelling fastest; and its furthest distance occurs at the time when it is travelling slowest.

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