This is just a shot in the dark but have you thought about parenting the whole shibang to a Controller null and animating that. You could place that null in the center of your sphere and place the light coming from New York. Set an expression so that the rotation of the Controller is the same as the rotation of the sphere so that they move together.
I couldn’t say for sure. I would have to look at it to be sure but that sounds like it might work.