SPACE — Mars is now a destination planet. Many missions, either unmanned or manned, will be sent to Mars in the future.
Would you like to spend a day on Mars? How much time do you have between sunrise and sunset on Mars?
If you want to see what the night sky looks like on Mars, a trip to the Red Planet in the future may be in the cards wishlist You. But will a day on Mars be much different from a day on Earth?
The planets in the Solar System vary greatly in terms of physical size, rotational speed, and size of their orbits around the Sun. This can have an impact on the length of the planet’s rotation, which means there is a difference in time within one day. What constitutes a day or a year on a planet can be very different from what we experience on Earth.
A day on Jupiter, for example, ends in just 10 hours. Meanwhile, one day on Venus lasts 243 days on Earth.
A day on Mars vs a day on Earth
Mars is very similar to Earth in many ways. These two planets are almost the same size, rotate at almost the same speed, and are located relatively close together in the Solar System.
So a day on Mars is actually not much different from a day on Earth. In fact, if an average day on Earth lasts about 23.9 hours, a day on Mars lasts about 24.6 hours.
How long a day on Mars actually is depends on whether you are talking about a sidereal day or a solar day.
A sidereal day is determined by the period of time you have to wait before a particular star or the Sun returns to the same position in the sky.
Both sidereal and solar days are not the same. Because, because when you look at distant stars, you are actually looking from a fixed position.
Meanwhile, when looking at the Sun which is closer, you have to take into account the movement of the Earth around it. As a result, the solar day is slightly longer than the sidereal day.
A sidereal day on Mars lasts 24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds. Meanwhile, a solar day on the Red Planet lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds.
To avoid possible confusion, astronomers usually speak in the context of solar days, or ‘Martian suns’ when talking about Mars.
2023-11-18 02:30:00
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