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 .
If we only measured sidereal days, the position of the Sun would slip back, day after day. For half of the year, the Sun would be up between 12am and 12pm, and for the other half, it would be between 12pm and 12am. There would be no connection between what time it is, and whether or not the Sun is in the sky.