Ron Torell, former University of Nevada Extension livestock specialist now retired, wrote a few years back that most cows pay for themselves by age six. âThus, the longer a cow stays in the herd, the more profitable she becomes.
Naturally, these hours, minutes, and seconds are shorter than the solar hours, minutes, and seconds you are familiar with. One solar day is 24 solar hours long, and one sidereal day is 24 sidereal hours long, but one sidereal day is 23 solar hours and 56 solar minutes long. This exercise was based on a help section of CyberSky. A shareware version of CyberSky is available from http://www.cybersky.com .
We measure a day on Earth as a period of 24 hours, but it actually takes the planet 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds to rotate on its axis. This measurement is actually called a sidereal day and is the length of time it takes the Earth to come back to the same position relative to the stars.