----------------------------------------------------------------Calculating mean and apparent sidereal time

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Overview
Finding days since J2000.0
Mean sidereal time
Longer time reach
Apparent sidereal time
GHA Aries for navigators

Overview
-------29th Jan 2002: Thanks to Hugh Gibson for finding errors and
supplying corrections to the apparent sidereal time formulas
here, especially the correction to the GMST to get GAST. The
corrected spreadsheet has been checked against ICE and is within
0.03 seconds of time up to 2050.
11th Feb 03: Thanks to those who pointed out the 'double
compensating error' in the worked example. Should all be sorted
now.
Thanks to Andres Valencia for
his re-formatting of the spreadsheet and increase in 'user
friendliness'
This page contains formulas to calculate the mean and apparent
sidereal time. The mean sidereal time on the meridian of
Greenwich agrees with the Interactive Computer Ephemeris (ICE) to
an accuracy of 0.02 of a second of time within a period of 50
years either side of the year 2000. The apparent sidereal time is
good to about 0.1 seconds for 40 years either side of the year
2000. The Nautical Almanac lists GHA Aries (the apparent sidereal
time at Greenwich) to 0.1 of a minute of arc. This corresponds to
0.4 seconds of time, so the algorithm here should suffice for
navigational applications.
Mealy Mouthed Disclaimer: Note that I do not certify this
algorithm and no extensive testing has been carried out. The
formulas used in this page are sensitive to rounding error. They
work fine on a spreadsheet and in most programming languages that
allow 'double precision' calculations (double in C, # in QBASIC).
A 10 place programmable calculator may suffer.
You might find some background helpful if you are not already
familiar with the celestial sphere and astronomical coordinates.
You can download an example MS Excel 97 spreadsheet along with an
SLYK export of the spreadsheet as a 6Kb ZIP file.
Finding the days since J2000.0
-----------------------------All the formulas connecting UT with sidereal time depend on the
time elapsed from the fundamental epoch. Older references will
use a date in 1900 as the epoch, Meeus and most recent formulas

use J2000.0 as the epoch. The formula below will find the days
since J2000.o for any date after 1900 and before 2099. That
should do me nicely...
The year is y, month m, date in the month is day, and the UT time
is in hours, mins and seconds.
dwhole =367*y-INT(7*(y+INT((m+9)/12))/4)+INT(275*m/9)+day-730531.5
dfrac = (h + mins/60 + seconds/3600)/24
d = dwhole + dfrac
INT is an integer part function, so INT(19.6) = 19. dfrac is just
the fraction of a day worked out from the UT hours, minutes and
seconds. The formulas can be joined into one formula, its just
too long a line for this file!
d must be the UT days, so you will need to convert your date and
time into UT date and time.
Mean sidereal time
-----------------The mean sidereal time at zero longitude is often called
Greenwich Mean sidereal Time or GMST. The formula below is based on
Meeus formula 11.4 with terms in the square and the cube of the
time left out. GST is in degrees!
GMST = 280.46061837 + 360.98564736629 * d
where
d = UT days since J2000.0, including parts of a day
You must subtract multiples of 360 to bring the answer into the
range 0 to 360 degrees.
To get the sidereal time at your longitude, known as Local Mean
sidereal Time, just add your longitude in degrees, taking East as
Positive, so
LMST = 280.46061837 + 360.98564736629 * d + Long
and again, remember to subtract multiples of 360 to bring the
answer into the range 0 to 360.
As an example, calculate the GMST on 1994 June 16th at 18h UT.
d = -2024.75000
GMST = 280.46061837 + -730905.68950490
= -730625.22888653
now -730625.22888653 divided by 360 gives -2029.51174690702, so
we add on 2030 to give a positive fraction of 360, giving at
last,
GMST = 0.48825309298 * 360 = 174.771113474402
= 174.77111 degs
This corresponds to 11h 39m 5.0672s in time units. ICE gives
11h 39m 05.0675s for the same time and date.

We can keep about 5 decimal places here, the error compared to

the full formula is about 0.000001 degrees. Note that you must
use a calculator, spreadsheet or programming language that can
keep 14 places of precision with this formula. The Excel
spreadsheet has a function called =mod(). A formula like the one
below returns the GST directly, given d in cell B3.
=MOD(280.46061837 + 360.98564736629 * B3, 360)
As I have dropped terms in the square and cube of the time, this
formula will become less accurate over time. It is easy to make a
graph showing the error using a spreadsheet. The full formula
has been compared with ICE and agrees better than 0.00002
seconds.
In 10 years, the approximation error will be 0.001 seconds. 30
years from now the error will still be better than 0.01 seconds.
A century from now, the approximation error will be 0.1 seconds.
However, 10 centuries from now the error will be 10 seconds....
Longer time reach
----------------If you need to calculate accurate sidereal times for the
historical past or far and optimistic future, then a term in the
square of time can be introduced:
GMST = 280.46061837 + 360.98564736629 * d + 0.000388 * t^2
Where
d = days since J2000.0 as before
t = julian centuries since J2000.0 = d / 36525
Errors through truncation with this formula amount to 0.008
seconds 1000 years into the future or past, and 0.0003 seconds
300 years into the future or past. With this kind of calculation,
you must be very careful about time. The formulas here use UT,
not dynamical time, known as TDT. Formulas used to predict the
positions of planets, the Moon, eclipses and so on use TDT. In
the current epoch, TDT - UT is about 65 seconds. That difference
increases to 2 hours for 4000 BC. Values of 'delta T' (as the
difference is known) for the far past can only be estimates based
on historical observations (often of solar eclipses).
Apparent sidereal time
---------------------We take the mean sidereal time and add a correction in seconds to
allow for the nutation and shift in the obliquity of the ecliptic
that occurs as a result of the Moon's gravitational dance around
the earth.
First, the formulas, then the explanations. As before, take d as
the days since J2000.0.
t = d / 36525
GMST = 280.46061837 + 360.98564736629 * d
as before. Now find (Meeus Ch21 approximate formulas)

Om
L
L1
e

=
=
=
=

125.04452 - 1934.136261 * t
280.4665 + 36000.7698 * t
218.3165 + 481267.8813 * t
23.439 - 0.0000004 * t

All of these quantities must be brought into the range 0 to 360

using the mod() function or similar.
and then
dp = -17.2*sin(Om) -1.32*sin(2*L) -0.23*sin(2*L1) +0.21*sin(2*Om)
de = 9.2*cos(Om) +0.57*cos(2*L) + 0.1*cos(2*L1) -0.09 *cos(2*Om)
e = eps + de
The correction to GMST in seconds of time is given by
correction = dp * cos(e) / 15
and so, in degrees
correction = dp * cos(e) / 3600
Now for some explanations. Om is the longitude of the ascending
node of the Moon's mean orbit ie the longitude when the Moon
passes through the plane of the ecliptic, L is the mean longitude
of the Sun, and L1 is the mean longitude of the Moon. eps is the
mean obliquity of the ecliptic (the tilt of the Earth's rotation
axis to the plane of the Earth-Sun orbit). This formula is a very
basic linear approximation that is good for 50 years either side
of J2000.0
dp is the change in the ecliptic longitude of a star due to the
nutation, and de is the shift in angle between the ecliptic and
equator. These angles measure the tugging of the Moon on the
Earth and the way it modulates the slow drift of the Earth's axis
due to precession. The formulas given above are good to about 0.5
arcsecond in dp and 0.1 arcsecond in de. This means roughly
0.5/15 seconds of time error or about 0.04 seconds of time either
way at the absolute worst case.
Using our example time of 1994 June 16 at 18h UT, we get
GMST =
=
Omega =
Sun mean long =
Moon mean long =
d phi (arcsec) =
d epsilon (arcsec) =
true obliqity =
correction (secs) =
correction (degs) =
apparent GST =
=

174.7711135
11h 39m 5.0672s
232.26266
84.77701
179.40773
13.57090
-6.06879
23.4398099
0.83007791
0.00346
174.77457
11h 39m 5.8973s

ICE gives
Date
Time
Year Mon Da h m s

Greenwich Sidereal Times Local Apparent

Apparent
Mean
Sidereal Time
h m s
h m s
h m s

1994 Jun 16 18 00 00 11 39 05.8974 11 39 05.0675 11 31 25.8894

Giving us an error of 0.0003s on the mean sidereal time and
similar on the apparent sidereal time.
We are using of approximate formulas for nutation, and the GAST
might be in error by up to 0.04 seconds By the way, the days
since J2000.0 used in the nutation formulas should, strictly
speaking, be in Dynamical Time, not UT. As Meeus points out, the
error introduced by using UT for short time spans is very very
small.
Looking at the date 2050 August 18th at 1800, we get
ICE
Approximation
Error

GMST
15 49 11.5745
15 49 11.5506
0.0239

GAST
15 49 12.4165
15 49 12.4005
0.0160

To find local sidereal times, mean or apparent, simply add your

longitude to the GST. Again, take longitude as positive East and
negative to the West.
GHA Aries
--------Navigators refer to the apparent GST for a given instant as the
Greenwich Hour Angle of Aries (i.e. the First Point of Aries).
The Nautical Almanac lists GHA Aries to 0.1 of an arcminute. This
corresponds to 6 arcseconds or 6 / 15 = 0.4 seconds of time. The
apparent GST here is accurate to about 0.1 second of time for the
next 40 years or so (0.02s from the use of truncated formulas for
mean GST and 0.08 seconds or so from the use of approximate
nutation formulas).

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----------------------------------------------------------------Keith Burnett (kburnett@btinternet.com) - 29 Jan 2002
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