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This data service provides the Greenwich mean and apparent sidereal time, local mean and apparent sidereal time, and the Equation of the Equinoxes for specified time(s).

Data will be provided for a three year period from 1 January of the preceding year through 31 December of the following year. For dates outside of this range, see MICA and our other data services.

Use Form A for cities or towns in the U.S. or its territories. Use Form B for all other locations. Both forms are immediately below.

Be sure to read the Notes section (on this page beyond the two forms) for definitions and additional details on the data.

Form A - U.S. Cities or Towns

Year:      Month:   January February March April May June July August September October November December    Day:  

Hour:   Minute:   Second:   Universal Time (UT1)

Tabular interval: Day(s) Hour(s) Minute(s) Second(s) Number of iterations: (1 to 9999)

State or Territory:   Alabama Alaska American Samoa Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota N. Mariana Islands Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

City or Town Name:  

The place name you enter above must be a city or town in the U.S. The place's location will be retrieved from a list of over 22,000 places. Either upper- or lower-case letters or a combination can be used. Spell out place name prefixes, as in "East Orange", "Fort Lauderdale", "Mount Vernon", etc. The only exception is "St.", which is entered as an abbreviation with a period, as in "St. Louis". You need only enter as many characters as will unambiguously identify the place. The city or town name may be left blank if the State or Territory is District of Columbia.

Form B - Locations Worldwide

Year:      Month:   January February March April May June July August September October November December    Day:  

Hour:   Minute:   Second:   Universal Time (UT1)

Tabular interval: Day(s) Hour(s) Minute(s) Second(s) Number of iterations: (1 to 9999)

Place Name Label:  

The place name you enter above is merely a label for the table header; you can enter any identifier, or none (avoid using punctuation characters). The data will be calculated for the longitude and latitude you enter below.

Note: With the exception of the seconds components, coordinate components should be entered as integers (no decimals).

Longitude:

east  west  degrees  minutes  seconds 

Latitude:

north  south  degrees  minutes  seconds 

Need coordinates?  Try NGA's GEOnet Names Server (GNS)
Need U.S. coordinates?  Try the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

Notes

How to Import the Table into a Spreadsheet

Open your favorite text editor, then copy the numerical part of the table (i.e., do not copy the table headings) from your browser and paste it into the text editor. Save the data as a text file.

In Excel for Windows, select Data on the menu bar, then From Text. Select your saved text file. Choose fixed width in the dialog box.

In Excel for Mac, select Data on the menu bar, then Get External Data, then Import from Text File. Select your saved text file. Choose fixed width in the dialog box.

Sidereal Time

Sidereal time is equal to the hour angle of the catalog equinox and is a direct measure of the diurnal rotation of the Earth. Apparent sidereal time is defined by the intersection of the true equator of date with the ecliptic of date and is affected by the precession and nutation of the axis of the Earth. Mean sidereal time is measured against the mean equinox of date and is only affected by precession.

The tabulated sidereal times are given in hours, minutes and seconds, rounded to the nearest 10^-4 second. The two quantities differ by very little.

Equation of the Equinoxes

The Equation of the Equinoxes is equal to the apparent sidereal time minus the mean sidereal time.

Equation of Time

The Equation of Time is the difference apparent solar time minus mean solar time. To obtain this value for a specified time, calculate the apparent geocentric right ascension and declination of the Sun using the Geocentric Positions of Major Solar System Objects and Bright Stars service.

Application Programming Interface

This data service uses one of our new Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The API returns data in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format for users who wish to manipulate data into a customized format. For more information on the API, please see the documentation page.