Saturday, February 29, 2020

A cool visualization of why we have leap days

Every four years we add a leap day to our calendar.
This visualization explains why that is necessary.
Earth physically rotates in 23hours 56min relative to distant stars – a Sidereal Day, BUT it takes 24hours to rotate relative to the Sun – a Solar Day.
The difference?
Earth orbits the Sun, so the Sun appears to move (down, in the vid), which means Earth needs +4mins to "catch up"!

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