- time measured by the orbital movements of the earth, the moon, and the planets.
- time that is based on the orbit of the earth around the sun rather than the axial rotation of the earth, one ephemeris second being 1/31 556 925.9747 of the tropical year 1900. It was used from 1960 to 1983 as an astronomical timescale but has been replaced by terrestrial dynamical time and barycentric dynamic time
