Coordinates & Time

Overview
- Time:
- Sidereal & Solar day
- Hour Angle, Local Time, Local Sidereal Time & time zones
- Sunset equation
- Coordinate astronomy:
- Right Ascension & Declination, Altitude & Azimuth
- Meridian, Ecliptic, Celestial Equator, Celestial
- Solstices, Equinox, 1st point of Aries, Earth’s tilt
- Spherical trigonometry & Great circles
- Asteroids and elevation
Minute and second of arc
All of you should be familiar with degrees, but what about arcminutes and
arcseconds?

Arcminute('): 1/60 of a degree

Arcsecond(''): 1/60 of a arcminute or 1/3600 of a degree

Use the button on your calculator to calculate with arcminutes

and arcseconds.

Example: Singapore has a latitude of 1° 17' 24.9720'' N

Solar vs Sidereal Day
Sidereal day: Time taken to complete 1 rotation (see 1 to 2)

Solar day: Time taken for the sun to reach the noon in the sky (1 to 3) [24h]

So, a solar day is longer than a sidereal day!

Solar vs Sidereal Day (Exercise)
But how many sidereal days are there in a solar year? A solar year has 365.24
solar days.

Over the course of one solar year, the additional rotation of a solar day is
accumulated to 360°, which is equivalent to the rotation of one sidereal day!

So a solar year has 366.24 sidereal days!

Solar vs Sidereal Day (Exercise)
So given that a Solar year has 365.24 days and a Sidereal Year has 366.24 days.
How long is a Sidereal Day?

365.24 x 24h = 366.24 x T

T = (365.24/366.24) x 24h = 23h 56min 4s

Thus, the length of a sidereal day is 23h 56min 4s and is 3min 56s shorter than a
solar day.
Solar vs Sidereal Day (IOAA 2011)
What would be the length of the solar and sidereal days, in the current time
measures (our solar hours, minutes and seconds), if the Earth would rotate in the
opposite direction, but with the same rotation speed?
Ans:
Now since the Earth is revolving clockwise instead, a solar day is shorter than a
sidereal day. The number of sidereal days remains constant.

Realise that the decrease in rotation of each solar day compared to the sidereal
day adds up to 360°

So there is one more solar day than the number of sidereal days in a year.
366.24 + 1 = 367.24 days

365.24 x 24h = 367.24 x T

T = (365.24/367.24) x 24h = 23h 52min 9s

Celestial Coordinate system
Celestial Poles: Points of where the earth
rotation axis intersects the celestial sphere

Zenith: the point directly above the observer

Meridian: A great circle that passes through

both celestial poles

Upper Meridian: A semicircle that passes

through both north and south points and the
zenith
Culmination
The point in time where an object
reaches the local meridian.

Upper culmination: Object reaches the

highest altitude

Lower culmination: Object reaches the

lowest altitude
Horizontal coordinate system (alt/az system)
Altitude: angle of the object perpendicular from the
horizon

Objects below the horizon have negative altitude.

Azimuth: angle of the object clockwise from north

along the horizon. North has an azimuth angle of 0°
Equatorial Coordinates
Declination, δ, is the angle of the object
perpendicular to the celestial equator.

A ‘+’ sign shows that the object is to the north

while a ‘-’ sign shows it is to the south.

Right Ascension, α, is the angle of the object

eastwards from the vernal equinox.

Measured in hours, minutes and seconds. 1h =

(360/24)° = 15°
Equatorial Coordinates
Ecliptic: Plane of earth’s orbit around the sun

Celestial equator: plane of rotation of the Earth

Due to the obliquity of the ecliptic (Earth’s tilt),

the celestial equator is 23.5° inclined from the
ecliptic
Time, time, and time again
Local Sidereal Time (LST): RA of the local
meridian.

So if a star with an RA of 6h is exactly at the

meridian. The LST is 6h.

Hour angle: Angle in hours and minutes

equivalent to the time elapsed since the object
had last passed the meridian.

Thus, A star with a HA of 1h had last passed

the local meridian 1 hour ago
Time, time, and time again (Exercise)
If a star with an RA of 6h is observed with a hour angle of 22h, what is the Local
Sidereal Time?

Ans: LST = H + a = 22h + 6h - 24h = 4h

So, the LST is 4h

Longitude & Latitude
Longitude: The angle east or west of the prime
meridian.

‘W’ or a ‘E’ is used to specify the direction of the

angle.

The prime meridian is defined where the longitude

is 0°. It’s close to the Greenwich, London

Latitude: The angle above/below the equator.

‘N’ or a ‘S’ is used to specify the direction of the

angle.
Time Zones
Greenwich Mean Time: The mean solar time at the Greenwich
Royal Observatory

Local time: Time the region adopts, basically the time you use
everyday is the local time of Singapore

Singapore’s time zone of GMT+8 means that the local time is 8

hours ahead of the GMT
Finding the ‘exact’ time zone you are in (exercise)
Given that Singapore has longitude of 103.82°E, find out the ‘actual’ time zone
Singapore is in.

Realise that 15° = 1 hour

Ans: 103.82/15 = 6.92

Singapore is actually approximately in the GMT+7 time zone!

Solstices and equinox
Equinox: date and point where the path of the sun
intersects the celestial equator

Solstice: date and point where the sun reaches the

most northerly or southerly position.

Vernal/March Equinox: Mar 20/21 (0h, 0°)

Summer/June Solstice: Jun 20/21 (6h, +23.5°)

Autumnal/September Equinox: Sep 22/23 (12h, 0°)

Winter/December Equinox: Dec 21/22 (18h, -23.5°)

First Points
First point of Aries: The location of the vernal
equinox on the celestial sphere. 0h RA

Due to precession of the earth, the first point of Aries

is located in Pieces instead!

First point of Libra: The location of the Autumnal

equinox on the celestial sphere. 12h RA

Similarly, the first point of Libra is located in Virgo!

Shadows (Exercise)
On the day of the summer solstice in Greenwich (51°30′N 0°00′W). What is the
shortest length of the shadow of a 1m pole?

Ans: Since it is the summer solstice, the declination of the sun is +23.5°

Smallest zenith angle of the sun occurs at noon where,

θ = ϕ - δ = 51°30′ - 23.5° = 28°

Length of shadow = 1m x tan28° = 0.532m

Dating Simulator (Exercise)
On a clear midnight (0000h), you observe a star with a RA of 6h passing the
meridian. What is the date?

Ans:

Dec 21/22

Since the time is 0000h, at noon, the sun will be observed with a RA of
6h+12h=18h. This corresponds to the RA of the sun at the winter solstice, so the
date is Dec 21/22
Alt solution
Taking March 21 as the Vernal Equinox

RA of the Sun at noon: 12h+6h=18h

18h/3min 56s ≈ 275 days

275 days from March 21 is Dec 21.

This can be used for other situations where the RA of the sun is not at a equinox
or solstice
Julian Day
The Julian Day (JD) is the count of the number of days elapsed since the start of the
current Julian Period (12:00 January 1, 4713 BC)

A Julian period lasts 7980 years

As of writing the value of the Julian date is 2459591.90486

Each day starts counting from noon Universal Time, though other time scales can be
used as well.

The Julian day number (JDN) is the integer value of the Julian date rounded down.

Used to specify a particular instance of time to ease calculations

Variants
Heliocentric Julian date
Basically it is the Julian Date but corrected to make the sun as the reference point
for observation.

Correction depends on the difference in the time taken for the light of the event to
reach the sun compared to Earth.

Time difference is 0 for objects on the ecliptic poles varies to a maximum/minimum

of ±8.3 mins
Derivation (cover after learning spherical trig)
Δd is basically the additional distance light has to travel to reach
ɑ-ɑ☉
earth. So we need to minus that time taken from the JD (and vice
versa)

HJD = JD - r x cos(θ) / c

With spherical trigo cos rule, you can expand cos(θ) r

Δd
into the term below.

Feel free to refer to the diagrams on the right Lines basically

parallel
Julian Year
A measurement of time defined as 86400 seconds of 365.25 days

Not related to the Julian date number

Used in astronomy to standardize a year.

Eg. A light-year is the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1 Julian year

It differs from the solar year which is 365.2422 days long

J2000 Epoch
An epoch is a reference point in time used in astronomy.

Important for the celestial coordinates as objects on the celestial sphere are
constantly changing position.

J2000 Epoch is currently used as the standard baseline.

J2000 is on January 1, 2000, at 12:00 TT (Terrestrial Time)

Any other number with the J prefix is calculated based on the number of Julian
years (not solar years) from J2000. Eg. J1900 is 100 Julian years before J2000
Differences in Betelgeuse's coordinates

The difference in coordinates will be more significant as the years progress.

So it is important for astronomers to specify the time when the celestial

coordinates are recorded
Universal Time (UT1)
Time based on the rotation of the Earth.

Measured by observing distant stars, or rather, X-Ray sources like distant quasars
using the Very Long Baseline Interferometry.

Since the rotation of the Earth is slowing down due to tidal interactions with the
moon, a UT day becomes longer.

Time flows non-uniformly, and a UT1 second is longer than a International Atomic
Time (TAI) second

Differs from UTC, which uses the atomic time.

International Atomic Time (TAI)
The TAI measures one second from the weighted average of over 400 atomic
clocks.

86400 seconds in a TAI day

Highly precise time standard

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
Successor to the GMT and the primary time standard the world uses.

Each second is equivalent to the TAI second

Differs from the UT1 as each second in the UTC is constant while a UT1 second is
irregular.

Leap seconds are added to UTC to ensure that the difference in time between
UT1 and UTC is ±0.9

So a day with a leap second is 86401 TAI seconds long

Currently 37 seconds behind TAI

Terrestrial time (TT)
A time scale adopted by astronomers to eliminate the effects of the Earth’s
rotation. Since, the Earth’s rotation period constantly differs from the length of a
day in atomic time (86400s)

It differs from the International Atomic Time (TAI), by 32.184 s. This offset is due to
historical reason when transitioning from the ephemeris time to TT

TT = TAI + 32.184 s

Used for time-measurements on the surface of the Earth

Equation of time
Equation of time(E.T.) is the difference between
the true solar time(T) and the mean solar time
(Tm)

E.T. = T − TM

Varies across the year with a maximum positive

value of +16 minutes and negative value of -14
minutes.

It is due to the Earth’s elliptical orbit which

results in varying angular velocities.
Time range
Find the range of the true solar time in Paris (longitude λ = 2◦) at 12:00. (GMT+1)

Ans:

Mean solar time = 12h - 1h + (2◦/15◦) x 60min = 11h 08min

Thus, adding the equation of time which varies from -14 minutes to +16 minutes to
the mean solar time gives the range of true solar time to be 10:54–11:24.
The Large Magellanic Cloud in Phuket (IOAA 2017)
The coordinates of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are R.A. = 5h 24min and
Dec =-70°00’ . The latitude and longitude of Phuket are 7°53’ N and 98°24’ E,
respectively. What is the date when the LMC culminates at 9pm as seen from
Phuket in the same year? You may note that the Greenwich sidereal time, GST, at
00h UT 1st January is about 6h 43min, and Phuket follows UT+7 time zone.
My method:
Corrected time zone of Phuket = 98°24’/15° = 6h 33min 36s

Diff in Local Time Zone and the actual time zone = 7h - 6h 33min 36s = 26min 24s

Hours to midnight = 3h + 26min 24s = 3h 26min 24s

LST at midnight = 3h 26min 24s + 5h 24min = 8h 50min 24s

Difference in LST from Jan 1st = 8h 50min 24s - 6h 43min = 2h 7min 24s

Number of days from Jan 1st = 2h 7min 24s / 3min 56s = 32.4 days

Thus the day that the LMC would culminate at 9pm is 2nd Feb
Alt method
Alt method aka actual ans:
Spherical Trigonometry
Great circles
The largest possible circle drawn around a
sphere

The shortest path of any two points on a sphere

is through an arc of a great circle

The plane of the great circle passes through the

center of the sphere.

As compared to the small circle, whose plane

does not pass through the center of the sphere
Spherical Trigonometry
Sine rule:

Cosine rule:

Variation:
Cotangent formulas
Useful to know:
Just a line (SAO 2018)
Canis Minor is a bright constellation seen in winter skies. Shown below is its two
brightest stars, Calculate the angular distance between the two stars. Do not
assume planar geometry.

Name RA Dec Apparent Visual Mag

α CMi 07h39m +05°14’ 0.34

β CMi 07h27m +08°17’ 2.89

Ans: Just a line (SAO 2018)
cos(c)=cos(5°14’)cos(3°)

c = 6.03°

Sin(90)/sin(c) = sin(A)/sin(5°14’)

A = 60.26°

cos(x) = cos(6.03°)cos(8°17’) + sin(6.03°)sin(8°17’)cos(90°-60.26°)

X = 4.26°
Alt ans:
cos(x) = cos(90°-05°14’)cos(90°-8°17’) + sin(90°-
05°14’)sin(90°-8°17’)cos(3°)

X = 4.26°
Sunrise Equation
How do we find the time it takes for a star/the sun to rise/set given any latitude
and declination of the sun/star?

Using the sunrise equation!

ω is the hour angle (time taken to set from the meridian)

Φ is the latitude’

δ is the declination of the star/sun

Sunrise Equation derivation
Using cos rule:

cos(90)=cos(90-ϕ)cos(90-δ) + sin(90-ϕ)sin(90-
δ)cos(ω)

Rearranging:

cos(ω)= - cos(90-ϕ)cos(90-δ)/sin(90-ϕ)sin(90-δ)

= - cot(90-ϕ)cot(90-δ)

= - tan(ϕ)tan(δ)
Corrections for sunrise equation
Note that some questions may require to take into account atmospheric refraction
or the disk of the sun.

Atmospheric refraction = 34’

Sun/moon apparent radius = 16’

Total correction is 34’+16’ = 50’

So the sun needs to travel 50’ more to set completely

General equation for sunrise equation
We have another formula that takes into account the altitude of the sun:

Altitude of the sun with corrections, a = -50’

Subbing in the other values you will get the hour angle of the sun/star when it sets

Adding/subtracting the hour angle to noon will give you the approximate
sunset/sunrise time
Derivation

Note: altitude is negative when the sun is

below the horizon
Azimuth angle

Using spherical trigonometry sine rule:

A is the azimuth angle

Daylight
Calculate the length of daytime (to the nearest minute) at the summer solstice at
Paris (48°51′24″N 2°21′08″E). Take into account the atmospheric refraction and
the disk of the sun.

Ans: The solar disc has a radius of 16’, and the atmospheric refraction allows us to
see 34’ below the horizon. So -16’ + -34’ = -50’ (altitude is negative)

cos𝐻=(sinα−sin𝜙sin𝛿)/cos𝜙cos𝛿

H = 121.45° (Hour angle of the sun when set)

Length of daytime = 121.45° x 2 / 15° =16h 12min

Sundial Shadow (USAAAO 2021)
Consider a horizontal sundial where the triangular gnomon rises at an angle equal
to the sundial site’s latitude, φ = 38° . If the area of the triangular gnomon is 2 m 2 ,
what would be the area of the shadow in m2 three hours after the noon in the first
day of spring (vernal equinox)?
Ans:
For this qn you need to consider both altitude and azimuth as they both affect the area shadow.

Altitude

cos𝐻=(sinα−sin𝜙sin𝛿)/cos𝜙cos𝛿

Since 𝛿 = 0,

sinα = cos𝐻cos𝜙

Additionally:

tanα = height/(shadow length)

Area of the shadow is proportional to cotα

Ans:
Azimuth:

Since 𝛿 = 0,

sinA = sin𝐻/cosα

Area of the shadow is proportional to sinA

S = Area x cotαsinA (cotα from alt and sinA from azi)

Ans:
S = Area x cotαsinA

S = 2 x cotα x sin𝐻/cosα

sinα = cos𝐻cos𝜙 (From the altitude part)

sinα = cos(15x3)cos(38)

α = 33.863

S = 2 x cot(33.863) x sin (45)/cos(33.863)

S = 2.5m2
Elevation
The elevation also affects the sunset/sunrise
times.

Using geometry as shown in the diagram we

can obtain the height of the tower/mountain the
observer is standing on or the extra time taken
for the sun to set.
Circumpolar stars
Circumpolar stars are stars that never set below the
horizon.

Whether some stars are circumpolar or not depends on

the observer’s latitude.

Similarly there are some stars that would never rise at

all at certain latitudes
Atmospheric refraction (2018 SAO)
Atmospheric refraction can produce some weird effects in Positional Astronomy.
Suppose Thanos (aka the mad titan) is a mad Astronomer, and he decides to
thicken the Earth’s atmosphere to a point where atmospheric refraction causes a
deviation of 5° near the horizon…

At certain latitudes, some stars that previously never rose above the horizon would
suddenly become circumpolar.

Find these particular ranges of latitude where such a phenomenon can be

observed. Neglect any small atmospheric refraction that existed before Thanos
came along. Note: more than 1 case to consider
Ans:
Realise that at the poles and around the equator, stars that were not previously
visible were now circumpolar.

At the poles:

+87.5° ≤ ϕ ≤ +90° and -87.5° ≥ ϕ ≥ -90°

At the equator:

+5° ≥ ϕ ≥ -5° ϕ ≠ 0°
Damavand Mountain (IOAA 2009)
The Damavand Mountain is located at the North part of Iran, in south coast of Caspian Sea.
Consider an observer standing on the Damavand mountaintop (latitude = 35◦57′ N; longitude
= 52◦6′ E; altitude 5.6 × 10^3 m from the mean sea level) and looking at the sky over the
Caspian Sea. What is the minimum declination for a star, to be seen marginally circumpolar
for this observer. Surface level of the Caspian Sea is approximately equal to the mean sea
level.

Earth’s Radius = 6380 km

Ans:
Cosθ = R/(R+h) = 6380/6385.6

θ = 2.4°

90°- 2.4°- 35°57’- 34’ (atmospheric refraction) = 51°

5’

Thus minimum declination of a star is +51° 5’ for it to

be circumpolar
Asteroids and satellites
Since satellites and some asteroids are much
closer to us than stars, the RA and declination of
them differs based on the observer’s position.

So some geometry is needed to determine the

distance or altitude of the object.
A Synchronous Satellite (2017 IOAA)
A synchronous satellite is a satellite which orbits the Earth with its period exactly
equal to the period of rotation of the Earth. The height of these satellites is 35,786
km above the surface of the Earth. A satellite is put at an inclined synchronous
orbit with the inclination θ = 6.69° to the equatorial plane. Calculate the precise
value of the possible maximum altitude of the satellite for an observer at latitude of
ϕ = 51.49°

Earth Radius: 6380km

Ans
a2 = R2 + (R + H)2 - 2R(R+H)cos(ϕ-θ) [cosine rule]

a = 37906km
a
Sin(90+h)/(R+H) = Sin(ϕ-θ)/a [Sine rule]

Sin(90+h)=(R+H)Sin(ϕ-θ)/a

90+h=128.39°

h=38.4°
Analemma
Diagram showing the position of the sun
when observed at the same position and
mean solar time (hour angle of the sun +
12H) across the span of a year.

Due to the combination of the obliquity

(Earth’s tilt) and the eccentricity of Earth’s
orbit.

If the orbit was perfectly spherical and

obliquity is zero, the sun will always appear
in the same spot at a specific timing.
Analemma (IOAA 2017)
North to the top.

Each large square is 5°

Diagram shows an analemma from

another planet.

What is the obliquity of this planet?

Ans:
Measure the angle between the northernmost point and southernmost point

5° x 18 = 90°

The obliquity is half of that

90°/2 = 45°
Questions?