Galactic Tick Day is an awareness and education day that celebrates the movement of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

around the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

galaxy. The day occurs at a regular interval of 1.7361 years (or 633.7 days), which is called a galactic tick. The interval is derived from one

centi ''Centi'' (symbol c) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of one hundredth. Proposed in 1793, and adopted in 1795, the prefix comes from the Latin , meaning "hundred" (cf. century, cent, percent, centennial). Since 1960, the pr ...

arcsecond A minute of arc, arcminute (abbreviated as arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of a degree. Since one degree is of a turn, or complete rotation, one arcminute is of a tu ...

of a

galactic year The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Sun to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

, which is the Solar System's roughly 225-million-year trip around the

Galactic Center The Galactic Center is the barycenter of the Milky Way and a corresponding point on the rotational axis of the galaxy. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a ...

. One galactic tick is only about 0.00000077 percent (1/ 60 × 60 × 60 × 100 of a full galactic year.

Occurrences

The Galactic Tick Day was retroactively calculated to begin on the day

Hans Lippershey Hans Lipperhey ( – buried 29 September 1619), also known as Johann Lippershey or simply Lippershey, was a Germany, German-Netherlands, Dutch Glasses, spectacle-maker. He is commonly associated with the invention of the telescope, because he was ...

filed the

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

for the

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...

on 2 October 1608. The first observance of the holiday was on 29 September 2016, the 235th Galactic Tick Day. Below is a list of further observances:

References

External links

Galactic Tick website

IFLScience.com article
about Galactic Tick Day
Disquiet Junto Project 0248: Galactic Tick
musical compositions on

SoundCloud SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is ...

GalacticTick
on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

{{Chronology Awareness days Observances about science Unofficial observances Milky Way

Occurrences

See also

References

External links