# Radians to Rotate Earth to Match ECI Lat/Lon with ECEF Lat/Lon

I am attempting to model GPS Satellite positions on the globe for a set of ephemerides. I have a verified set of ECI ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered_inertial ) XYZ Coordinates and a verified set of ECEF ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECEF ) XYZ coordinates.

For example ( m ):
ECEF X 4076514.50
ECEF Y 14673598.00
ECEF Z -21793674.00

ECI X 8004604.50
ECI Y 12956032.00
ECI Z -21793674.00


Sometimes the signs of the ECI X and Y coordinates are opposite of the signs for the ECEF X and Y coordinates.

When I plot these locations on a globe and, obviously they do not match unless you rotate the earth by some number of radians. I can see that if you rotate the earth, the ECI coordinates follow a groundtrack that is consistent with the ECEF groundtrack, but with my current code, it is offset by different varying amounts, depending on the time of day I plot it.

Here is my code:

// The radians earth rotates in 1 second
double earthRotation = 0.000072921151467;

// Do something different depending on the switch position
if ( self.shouldAnimate == true ) {

// The seconds since we started rotating
double newRotationMultiplier = [self.eciDate timeIntervalSinceDate:self.lastEciDate];

// Seconds           // Rad/Sec        // Multiplier
self.timeSinceOpenGlStarted = newRotationMultiplier * earthRotation;
matrixToRotate = GLKMatrix4Rotate(matrixToRotate, self.timeSinceOpenGlStarted, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);

// Latch it so that when we stop rotating, it doesn't revert
self.effect.transform.modelviewMatrix = matrixToRotate;

}


How do I determine the radians to rotate the earth to show an ECI positions for a time to be the same location on the rotated globe ( in terms of latitude and longitude )? That is, how do I calculate for any UTC time in a day, how much to rotate the earth about the Z ( "Up" ) axis so that the ECI coordinates agree with the ECEF coordinates and the satellites appear to be in the same position over my 3D globe?

UPDATE:

I got it to work - thanks to the answer below! Here is the code:

    // Get the NSDate components
NSCalendar *currentCalendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
[currentCalendar setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneWithAbbreviation:@"UTC"]];
NSDateComponents *components = [currentCalendar components:NSCalendarUnitDay | NSCalendarUnitMonth | NSCalendarUnitYear | NSHourCalendarUnit | NSMinuteCalendarUnit | NSSecondCalendarUnit fromDate:self.eciDate];
[components setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneWithAbbreviation:@"UTC"]];
NSInteger hour = [components hour];
NSInteger minute = [components minute];
NSInteger second = [components second];

// Get UTC in terms of decimal hours
float utc = hour + (float)minute/60.0f + (float)second/3600.0f; // UTC is expressed in hours as a decimal number

//NSLog(@"UTC: %f H %f M %f S %f",utc,(float)hour,(float)minute/60.0f ,(float)second/3600.0f);

// Get the seconds since the last vernal equinox
double secondsSinceVernalEquinox = [self.eciDate timeIntervalSinceDate:appDelegate.lastVernalEquinox];

// Do the math
double d = secondsSinceVernalEquinox  / ( 60.0 * 60.0 * 24.0 ); // Give decimal days
double p = 365.242187; // Length of tropical year
double result = ( M_PI * 2 / 24 ) * ( utc - 12.0 ) + ( 2 * M_PI * d  / p );

// Seconds           // Rad/Sec        // Multiplier
self.timeSinceOpenGlStarted = result;
matrixToRotate = GLKMatrix4Rotate(matrixToRotate, self.timeSinceOpenGlStarted, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);

// Latch it so that when we stop rotating, it doesn't revert
self.effect.transform.modelviewMatrix = matrixToRotate;

• My first answer was not entirely accurate (I think it's about 1.8 degrees off), because $d$ should be measured from the perihelion instead of the vernal equinox, plus an extra constant. However, I found a more accurate and simpler formula; see my updated answer. – Pulsar Feb 10 '14 at 4:03

The rotation angle $\theta$ is the angle between the vernal point and the meridian at Greenwich. This also corresponds with the Sidereal Time at Greenwich, converted to radians.
For a given UTC time and a given date, the corresponding Greenwich (Mean) Sidereal Time (in hours and decimal parts of an hour) can be calculated as $$\text{GMST} = 18.697\,374\,558 + 24.065\,709\,824\,419\,d,$$ where $d$ is the interval, in UT1 days including any fraction of a day, since 2000 January 1, at 12h UT (source: US Naval Observatory). Of course, this must be reduced to the range 0h to 24h. The rotation angle is then simply $$\theta = \frac{2\pi}{24}\text{GMST}.$$