Hardly another "precessional year" goes by and astronomers are back to the drawing board to re-define the rate and motion of precession with high precision. According to the latest improvements of the IAU Precession-Nutation Model, the rate for the so-called “Precession of the Equator” stands now at 5038".47875/ century or about 50.38”/ year.

http://syrte.obspm.fr/documents/papers/Preccomp04.pdf

While astronomers fight for milliarcseconds, they completely forget about the cause for the figure in front of the decimal point. Instead, astronomers constantly modify theoretical expressions and develop analytical solutions to adjust precession rates so that these may better fit with current observations, which merely reflect the natural result of our solar system "curving" through space.

Of course, astronomers still believe that the gravitational perturbations by the Moon and the planets slowly increase the rate of the general precession in longitude. Unfortunately, they cannot explain what motions the Moon and the planets exactly make to gradually accelerate the precession rate over the last 100 years. We know it’s not nutation and it certainly can't be the gravitational influence of an apparently increasing distance between Earth and Moon. If it’s due to orbital precession, which planetary orbits are causing the big problem?

The various rates of precession and the ‘constant of precession’ are always defined with respect to the defined time period of the fundamental tropical year/century!

The mean motion of the Earth is known very precisely, much more precisely than any mass or distance in the universe. The dilemma is that one needs inertial space to accurately derive the constant of precession, while inertial space is derived from this constant defined by the position of the vernal equinox projected into space.

Precession represents the time difference that occurs with each complete rotation of the Earth on its axis; it’s an angular measure through which the Earth must rotate. Precession does not affect Earth’s orbital speed or its period of revolution around the Sun. Precession also does not affect Earth’s inertial spin period. That means, in the absence of precession both Earth’s period of rotation relative to inertial space and Earth’s period of rotation relative to the position of Sun at the point of the vernal equinox (mean sidereal or equinoctial day) are time-equivalent.

In reality, due to the gradual changes of the direction of Earth’s axis of rotation in space, the equinoctial day is about 9 milliseconds shorter than Earth’s period of rotation relative to inertial space. In other words, this time difference exists relative to the “fixed” stars but NOT relative to the “moving” Sun. Such observation would be physically impossible, if the position of the Sun were to remain fixed relative to a wobbling Earth.

This simple mathematical and geometrical fact is extremely difficult to grasp by anyone who lives in a world where complete circles have approximately 359°59’10”.

In order to visualize, however, whether or not lunisolar wobble is a reality, all one has to do is to ask a simple question:

If the Earth does absolutely NOT rotate on its axis, yet continues to orbit the Sun in the same manner as it does now, what would be the exact length of the "mean solar day"?

By comparing the answer with practical observations, measurements and the laws of geometry, and by pondering the results, it is possible to arrive at a picture that clearly represents physical reality!