An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

A measure of the variation in → Earth’s rotation, which is the difference between → Terrestrial Time (TT) and → Universal Time (UT). TT is uniform and related to the → International Atomic Time, whereas UT, which is directly tied to the Earth’s rotation, is not strictly uniform and shows small erratic fluctuations. Between 1970 and 1990, ΔT changed from +40 to +57 seconds, and was +67 seconds for 2010.

See also: Δ, Gk. letter of alphabet indicating a difference; T for → time.