day, time required for a celestial body to turn once on its axis; especially the period of the Earth’s rotation. The sidereal day is the time required for the Earth to rotate once relative to the background of the stars—i.e., the time between two observed passages of a star over the same meridian of longitude. The apparent solar day is the time between two successive transits of the Sun over the same meridian. Because the orbital motion of the Earth makes the Sun seem to move slightly eastward each day relative to the stars, the solar day is about four minutes longer than the sidereal day; i.e., the mean solar day is 24 hours 3 minutes 56.555 seconds of mean sidereal time; more usually the sidereal day is expressed in terms of solar time, being 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds of mean solar time long. The mean solar day is the average value of the solar day, which changes slightly in length during the year as Earth’s speed in its orbit varies.
The solar day is the fundamental unit of time in both astronomical practice and civil life. It begins at midnight and runs through 24 hours, until the next midnight. A day is commonly divided into two sets of 12 hours for ordinary timekeeping purposes; those hours from midnight to noon are designated am (ante meridiem, “before noon”), and those from noon to midnight are designated pm (post meridiem, “after noon”). In law the word day, unless qualified, means the 24 hours between midnight and midnight, rather than the daylight hours between sunrise and sunset.