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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.

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    $\begingroup$ A really awesome day. :-D $\endgroup$
    – Vikki
    Commented Dec 15, 2021 at 17:47

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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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  • $\begingroup$ So that last point is the important subtlety (and the one missed in the Wikipedia definition): it's not about "a rotation with respect to" the celestial sphere, which suggests returning to the same point (a time that varies over the celestial sphere); it's about the rotation with respect to the inertial frame defined by the celestial sphere. $\endgroup$
    – orome
    Commented Nov 1, 2012 at 1:29
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The sidereal day is the (mean) time between two transits of the R.A. origin, i.e. the vernal equinox. You are right, and this is strictly not equal to the time it takes the Earth to do a rotation in relation to the fixed stars, because the Vernal Equinox itself is precessing (and nutating).

The amount of time it takes the Vernal Equinox to do a full rotation is suposed to be well known (26000 yr) so you can simply make the correction: since the Vernal Equinox moves towards west, that period you call "stellar day" must be slightly larger, and you can do the correction very easily (I don think there is a more formal definition based upon any reference star, but please post it here if you find it).

Just for curiosity, in which context are you using that "stellar day"? I had never heard about it. Astronomers use the sidereal day as a synonym. The difference is surely much smaller than the "imprecisions" of the Earth movement itself, so it should have had no sense in the past (nor today with atomic clocks).

(Not to be confused with the Solar Day, i.e. the time between two transits of the Mean Sun, which is the "normal" 24-hour day, about 4 minutes larger than the Sidereal Day)

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  • $\begingroup$ The term "stellar day" isn't one I'd come across before either. I first saw it on Wikipedia, actually, where it appears in several articles. It is also referred to here. $\endgroup$
    – orome
    Commented Nov 1, 2012 at 1:17
  • $\begingroup$ Another complication (at least if I'm visualizing this right): The process you describe above for making the correction between the length of a stellar and sidereal day in an average one, since, even though $\Delta\lambda$ varies only slightly, due to the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, and may be taken as constant, the corresponding $\Delta\alpha$, which determines the difference between stellar and sidereal day length, varies with the $\delta$ of the point being tracked along the ecliptic. $\endgroup$
    – orome
    Commented Nov 1, 2012 at 1:23
  • $\begingroup$ That is similar to the question that leads the Solar Day to be defined by the Mean Sun (ideal point at constant speed in the celestial equator instead of the eclyptic), since the eclyptic plane is tilted with respect to the equator (defined as normal to the rotation axis). Only average ang speeds are used in these definitions. In the sidereal day too. $\endgroup$
    – Eduardo Guerras Valera
    Commented Nov 1, 2012 at 7:00
  • $\begingroup$ Even through the eclyptic, the real Sun has no constant speed (thank Kepler for that), not to mention the variations in the orbital parameters of the Earth, a fraction being totally unpredictable... So, take only mean ideal speeds in the equator for definitions such as your stellar day. $\endgroup$
    – Eduardo Guerras Valera
    Commented Nov 1, 2012 at 7:11
  • $\begingroup$ My comment above isn't quite right. Even assuming an idealized constant stellar day, and an idealized constant rate of precession, it seems to be that the duration of the sidereal day must vary systematically. But that's totally different question. $\endgroup$
    – orome
    Commented Nov 1, 2012 at 21:48
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I think the original post was asking what a stellar day is as the sidereal day is a rotation of the earth and a solar day is a sidereal day + the missing 3 minutes 56 sec needed to = 24 hours. So why do we need a stellar day and what is it used for? To my understanding Stellar day is the more accurate name of a full 26,000 years rotations as a sidereal day is shorter by 0.0084 seconds.

Stellar day = the longer "true" sidereal period as note by the International Earth Rotation Reference systems Service

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    $\begingroup$ This doesn't really answer the original question, it's more of a comment or additional question $\endgroup$
    – paisanco
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 1:44
  • $\begingroup$ updated to distinguish the different from stellar vs sidereal day $\endgroup$
    – user123616
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 2:24
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In the traditional way of locating stars, astronomers measured everything from the "first point of Aires", the R.A. origin. The time it took this point to back rotate around to the same point in the sky is the definition of a sidereal day. Since the earth's axis processes, this point moves in the sky each sidereal day. A newer way of measuring is to use the Earth Rotation Angle (ERA). The time that it take for the earth to rotate 360 degrees relative to disant "fixed" stars is called a stellar day.

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