Use the following formula to calculate Mean Solar Time (MST) for your locality:
You can calculate the longitude of a place when time is given using the Greenwich solar time.
It very much depends on what is meant by solar time. Not really, it's fairly clear. There are 2 types of solar time: 1) "Apparent solar time". At any particular place this is called the "local apparent solar time", because it depends on longitude. 2) "Mean solar time". This averages out the natural variations of "apparent solar time". (The word "mean" is just a way of saying "average".) This too is depends on longitude of course, but time zones are used to cover a wide area, for convenience.
Longitude
The Earth "day" of exactly 24 hours is the "mean solar day""Mean" is basically a scientific way of saying "average". It's called a "solar day " because it's based on the position of the Sun in the sky.There are natural variations in the length of the solar day because of the Earth's elliptical orbit and axial tilt.The "mean solar day" averages out the variations that happen during the year.This makes things much more convenient for everyday life."Mean solar time" is based on the "mean solar day".The "apparent solar day" is the what we actually observe, and its length varies from day to day.A sundial measures "apparent solar time". We can convert this time to mean solar time by using something called "the equation of time".Actually, the sundial shows "local apparent solar time".That's because the time shown by a sundial depends on its exact longitude.For convenience, mean solar time has time zones (based on longitude).So, longitude also affects the relationship between these twomeasures of time.
the average of the mean solar time for a particular time zone
The same as local apparent noon. When the sun is the highest in the sky. This is true. However; to be more specific solar noon is half way between sunrise and sunset. It's at solar noon that a point gets the most direct sunlight of the day. To calculate solar noon you find out how many hours of daylight there are between sunrise and sunset and divide by 2. Add the quotient to the sunrise time and that will give you the solar noon time.
Mean solar time
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Local noon.
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No, because of the difference between their longitudes, mean local noon at Buffalo (12:16 PM EST) is about 20½ minutes after mean local noon at Albany (11:55 AM EST).
Because, when using "apparent solar time", the length of a "solar day" varies slightly during the year. (This is because the Earth's orbit isn't exactly circular and the Earth's axis is tilted.) "Clock time" is based on an average (or "mean") of these day lengths, called the "mean solar day". So clocks use "mean solar time". (By coincidence, on the date the question was answered (14th April) "apparent solar time" and 'clock' time are synchronised.) There's another reason for apparent solar time being different from clock time. "Clock time" uses time zones. So, over a wide area, the time on a clock equals the "mean solar time" at a particular, defining, longitude.