Questions tagged [time]
Questions on time, the indefinite progress of events in the Universe.
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Why do people say travelling at the speed of light or faster is impossible? [closed]
Impossible assumes we know everything there is to know about, well, everything. There was a time when everything mad knew said that traveling faster than the speed of sound was impossible. These same ...
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2answers
458 views
Rotation of far away and near by galaxies
Do the far galaxies rotate the same as does the milky way and the near by galaxies?
3
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1answer
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Synodic Day and Sidereal Day
If given the sidereal day, is it possible to derive the synodic day of Earth? If a derivation is possible, could anyone illustrate it or point me in the right direction?
Wikipedia's Synodic day begins:...
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1answer
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What's the reason the Astronomical twilight doesn't have constant time? [duplicate]
What's the reason the Astronomical twilight doesn't have constant time although its degrees below the horizon (18 degrees) are constant?
3
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2answers
120 views
What are the Time Zones on Mercury?
I normally post on worldbuilding, but this question is merely about facts of a planets orbit and spin. I am trying to figure out how time periods work on Mercury to possibly make a worldbuilding guide ...
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1answer
74 views
On Augustus' Actual Prescription to Restore the Julian Calendar to Accuracy
I hope that I may ask this question here as I have seen some favorably received questions related to the Julian calendar on this site.
From James Evans' book, ``The History and Practice of Ancient ...
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1answer
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What are the stages in the life of a universe?
Geological periods describe varying phases in the last few hundred million years on earth.
Are there any names for the periods on a timescale 1-2 orders of magnitude greater, that is, for the stages ...
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1answer
140 views
If it only takes 8 minutes for that light to reach the Earth, what took up most of the time? [closed]
If it only takes 8 minutes for that light to reach the Earth, what took up most of all that time to get to the Earth?
2
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1answer
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Calculating the Solar Day of an Exoplanet?
I am currently in the process of compiling a list of stars and their planets, given the information in the European Star Catalogue found here, but I'm struggling to find out how to calculate a planets ...
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How accurate is the “Equation of time” (mean time to actual solar time)? And how much can it vary from the average?
At Wikipedia, they give equal values (9.87 min) for all four extremes – both troughs and both crests – caused by the obliquity of the ecliptic as seen in the graph below, where the purple dashed line ...
2
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1answer
84 views
How long was a lunar month in ancient times?
As the Moon is getting farther and farther from Earth, it's natural that the time it takes to circle around our planet is going to increase, thus the month will be longer.
However, I read that the ...
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What was there before the big bang [duplicate]
we know that our universe is expanding, but we must agree to the fact that it has a limit. It just cant expand till infinity. Eventually there will be a end to time. I thought alot about this and i ...
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Sundial terminology
My homeschoolers are studying the sun & time. We have set up a fence post to create a shadow and we are using it with experiments I found on the web to track the sun.
What we cannot find is ...
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Why are the time zones calculated as 360°/24 and not 361°/24 or 360°/23.933?
Background: I'm training to be a geography teacher. Currently I have practice lessons and I'll be discussing solar time and standard time with the class. Now I stumbled over an issue to which I could ...
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1answer
81 views
Why does time pass faster in moon than the earth?
One of my friends said that,
time passes faster in moon than the earth
Why does time pass faster on the moon than on the earth?
2
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0answers
48 views
How are various orbital period measured?
How are the sidereal periods and synodic periods of celestial bodies measured from earth? The usual definition of the sidereal period of a celestial body is the time it takes to complete one ...
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2answers
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Timekeeping on other celestial bodies than Earth
I have looked for months for any site capable of calculating solar altitude w.r.t an observer located on the surface of a generic celestial bodies, but with no luck as of now. Even NASA does not ...
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3answers
531 views
What does BJD-2450000 mean?
In different papers I've encountered time indications in BJD-2450000. I know that BJD stands for Barycentric Julian Date, but I don't understand the meaning of the suffix -2450000.
This is an example ...
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3answers
859 views
Julian Day Calculation
I'm trying to calculate the Julian Day, given a UTC year, month and date in the Gregorian calendar. I tried using the formula on Wikipedia, but that doesn't work. Consider 2010-01-31 and 2010-02-01. ...
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1answer
68 views
How can I correct for transit time?
I know the exact time a radio telescope detected a transient event. I also know the exact location of the telescope, and the galactic coordinates (galactic longitude, latitude) and right ascension and ...
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0answers
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Does time flow in a Minkowski spacetime?
In a spacetime where the stress-energy tensor is null (no energy, no matter, no entropy), I wonder whether any motion of the variable time in the phase-space is well defined.
The arrow of time, meant ...
2
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0answers
71 views
If time is not absolute and depends on the gravitational field, then why we keep using our own (particular) time in cosmology?
Sorry if my question is not really clear, but indeed it is not clear in my mind neither.
But maybe some of you can help.
Time is not absolute and can be affected by the gravitational potential.
Now ...
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2answers
195 views
Convert dates to julian day number in astropy?
I'm using astropy and I need to convert dates like this:
2012.06.22_17:56:15_TAI
into julian day number. I tried:
...
3
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1answer
762 views
How much time passes in the outside universe when falling into a black hole?
If someone were to jump into a black hole, looking back at Earth, how far into the future would they see of Earth? As I understand it, time would dilate approaching infinity as you approach the event ...
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1answer
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How to calculate sunrise and sunset on on a given date and location?
I have a given date at any time in future or past eg: 2016-04-23 or 2022-05-12
Now given at any location(lat,lng). How do i find the time of sunrise or sunset.
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How do we measure the age of the universe?
As mentioned in wiki/Age_of_the_universe,
The current measurement of the age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years (as of 2015) – 13.799±0.021 billion years
When my friend who is not from ...
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1answer
143 views
So, what, exactly, is a tropical period?
From timezone.com's On the Units of Time Part III: The Year February 19, 2001, by Edward Hahn:
Uh, Oh…He’s Going to Ask That Question Again…
So, what, exactly, is a year?
@PM2Ring's comment
FWIW, ...
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2answers
685 views
Is a year really 365.24 days, or is it 365.2564 days like I remember?
The NPR News item and podcast Spring Starts Today All Over America, Which Is Weird includes the following:
But why isn't the time of the equinox the same each year?
The short answer is that the time ...
2
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2answers
149 views
When was the longest day on record?
The Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down. It was significantly shorter in the prehistoric past, but now we need to add a leap second every few years and we've not yet had to take any back. In ...
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1answer
66 views
Encode place and date in star pattern
Disclaimer: I'm an astronomy noob
You sometimes see in (B?) movies, that they infer dates from sky patterns.
I was asking myself if you can encode a place and date in a mostly meaningful pattern? ...
4
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1answer
156 views
How is the Gould Belt younger than the sun?
Our sun is located in the Gould Belt, a group of stars which is thought to be 30 - 50 million years old. However, the sun formed 4.6 billion years ago.
Did the belt form around us?
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1answer
149 views
What is the exact time of sun stay in each zodiac every year on sidereal year duration?
I tried to reverse engineer from astro-chart times at which sun stays in a zodiac.
Here is the list.
...
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2answers
338 views
Does mean solar time and sidereal time sometimes indicate the same time?
I'm trying to wrap my head around the different definitions of time. Since mean solar time depends on the Sun, and sidereal time depends on the stars, and since the position of the Sun relative to the ...
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2answers
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How can I calculate 27 tropical/solar year since my birthdate?
Let's say I was born on 27th November 1993 at 03:15:15 AM. Is there any way I can calculate exact 27 tropical cycle since my birthdate/birthtime.
What date and what time it will be after exact 27 ...
3
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2answers
81 views
Are there predictions of the distribution of matter at the end of time
Are there any theoretical predictions or "educated speculation" by cosmologists on how matter will be distributed at very, very distant times in the future?
For example, will matter be:
agglutinated ...
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1answer
76 views
Is there a way to know the time according the moon appearance?
Is it possible know the time according to the moon location? To look at the sky at night and then determine what the time is.
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2answers
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Can I use the Tokyo Skytree as clock?
After my observation today at the Skytree in Tokyo, I am wondering if this building could be used as a giant sundial?
As an aside, it would be interesting to consider how the Skytree might be used ...
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How is time defined in astronomy?
I was amazed when my teacher told me that in space, time is define as a coordinate. It means we can define something with a four coordinate system with "negative time" $-t$ as easily as we can say $-...
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0answers
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Does Gravitational Time Dilation stack on top of Time Dilation caused by Velocity?
Using 1 CM from the Event Horizon of Super Massive Black Hole, SGR A, as the reference point. The particles within the accretion disk are traveling at extreme high speeds. Assume this speed increases ...
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Coordinate system for space [closed]
I am high school student, I have doubt if I have to locate a planet or any star in space, how do I locate it, because we have no perfect coordinate system, I have read in some books, that time is ...
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Syncing time for measuring the parallax of Mars
I read somewhere (I can't remember the website) that when Cassini and Jean Richer measured the parallax of Mars, they used Jupiter's (or maybe Saturn's) moons to sync their time. How was this done?
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Why does “longitude by chronometer” require first calculating latitude?
I'm studying the history of longitude and Greenwich Time, and I'm currently confused about the "longitude by chronometer" technique.
Conceptually, the method seems extremely simple. With a ...
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3answers
216 views
How can we see stars if they are hundred years of light far from the Earth?
So the right question is, is the light years counted from that second when you look up to the sky? If that so, how can we see the stars from the telescope (which I think it starts when you put your ...
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1answer
122 views
How do I calculate Allan Variance (maybe for pulsars)?
I am studying pulsar timing this summer and have come across many Allan Deviation plots that include several popular clocks alongside pulsar measurements, like this one by N. Ashby and D.A. Howe:
I ...
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What exactly is a Right Ascension clock and how was one (mounted on a telescope) used in practice, historically?
@MikeG's answer to Why does this Lowell Observatory telescope have so many knobs? What do they all do? explains that item #6 labeled in the image there (and cropped version here) is likely to be a "...
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2answers
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What are some examples of routine human activity times for certain cultures/peopes that are based on the position of the sun?
What are some examples of timekeeping that are based on the height/angle/position of the sun. Two examples that come to mind are the times of the Islamic prayers times and the golden hour in ...
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Is TDB monotonic? Does it or any of its derivatives have yearly discontinuities with respect to an atomic clock?
This in-depth answer mentions that
...TDB is updated every year. As technology improves, these subtle updates change the timing of past events.
This makes me wonder...
Does this updating result ...
3
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1answer
132 views
Validity of ephemeris time
In the wikipedia article for ephemeris time as first adopted in 1952, it does not explain clearly how or why it was superseded. For example, it reads:
In 1976 the IAU resolved that the theoretical ...
8
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1answer
456 views
Universe is expanding, why doesn't time expand with it?
Reading this response When the universe expands does it create new space, matter, or something else? I understand Universe is not expanding like if it is stretching its space, but it is actually ...
4
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1answer
381 views
Sorting out Julian Day, Julian Date, Julian Day number, Julian Day Calendar, and Julian Day Table
In this answer I mention day number which is 1 on the first day of each calendar year (January 1) and increments to 365 or 366 on December 31 of that year.
There was an edit proposed, which included ...
