YEAR

The interval required for the earth to complete one revolution around the sun. A sidereal year, which is the time it take for the earth to make one absolute revolution around the sun, is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.5 seconds. The calendar year begins at 12 o'clock midnight local time on the night of December 31st-January 1st. Currently, the Gregorian calendar of 365 days is used, with 366 days every four years, a leap year. The tropical year, also called the mean solar year, is dependent on the seasons. It is the interval between two consecutive returns of the sun to the vernal equinox. In 1900, that took 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, and it is decreasing at the rate of 0.53 second per century.