On Sunday, August 9, 2015 at 3:57:57 PM UTC-6, Brian Denzer wrote:

What is he talking about, how did he arrive at those numbers, and what is the
unit used in the last term (thirds?)?

Yes, that is the standard symbol for the "third", one-sixtieth of a second.

For the Earth to travel 359° 45' 40" 31''' in one year, instead of 360° does mean that what definition of the year he is using is important.

Converting that to a decimal fraction of 360 degrees, one gets:

0.9993368184...

For comparison:

A tropical year is

0.9999612...

sidereal years. So that isn't it.

A Julian year is

0.999982587...

sidereal years, so that's even worse.

365 days is

0.9992981368...

sidereal years - so that may have been what he was talking about.


365 days is also

0.999336878...

tropical years; so that's even more likely to be that to which he was referring.

John Savard