[Physics] the formal definition of a stellar day

astronomyinertial-framesrotation

I'm having trouble understanding precisely what a stellar day is. Neither the USNO nor the IERS sites provide a definition. And Wikipedia's description as the "rotation period relative to the fixed stars" as "the span of time it takes for the Earth to make one entire rotation with respect to the celestial background or a distant star" is confusing, since, relative to fixed stars, the earth is both rotating and precessing, so that the rotation period relative to fixed stars as such, is not a single value, but will be different for stars with different equatorial coordinates.

I assume that the stellar day is simply the earth's rotation period on its axis, but I'm not sure that's right, or how to state it formally (e.g. with respect to inertial frames).


I understand why the stellar day is distinct from and longer than the sidereal day, since the coordinate system that defines a sidereal day is rotating slowly against the rotation of the earth.

Best Answer

According to the Wikipedia article you reference, "stellar day" is supposedly a new name for a planet's sidereal rotation period. However, I cannot find any documentation of this new name anywhere, and that includes my copy of Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac, 3rd edition, edited by Urban and Seidelmann (University Science Books, 2012) which was just published within the month. This source is definitive and the term doesn't appear therein (okay at least not in the index). However, further digging found reference to it here

http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/models/constants.html

but I've yet to find an actual statement of the change in terminology from "sidereal rotation period" to "stellar day" anywhere in the IERS conventions. Anywhere, the distinction is that the sidereal day is measured relative to the moving vernal equinox, which accounts for precession, whereas the sidereal rotation period (stellar day) is relative to the fixed inertial frame of background stars.

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