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Mars has an orbit with a semimajor axis of 1.524 astronomical units (228 million km) (12.673 light minutes), and an eccentricity of 0.0934. [1][2] The planet orbits the Sun in 687 days [3] and travels 9.55 AU in doing so, [4] making the average orbital speed 24 km/s. The eccentricity is greater than that of every other planet except Mercury ...
Rotation period (astronomy) In astronomy, the rotation period or spin period[1] of a celestial object (e.g., star, planet, moon, asteroid) has two definitions. The first one corresponds to the sidereal rotation period (or sidereal day), i.e., the time that the object takes to complete a full rotation around its axis relative to the background ...
The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy , it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun , moons orbiting planets, exoplanets orbiting other stars , or binary stars .
Orbit of Mars and other Inner Solar System planets. Mars's average distance from the Sun is roughly 230 million km (143 million mi), and its orbital period is 687 (Earth) days. The solar day (or sol) on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day: 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. [185]
By 1784, the southern cap appeared much smaller, thereby suggesting that the caps vary with the planet's seasons and thus were made of ice. In 1781, he estimated the rotation period of Mars as 24 h 39 m 21.67 s and measured the axial tilt of the planet's poles to the orbital plane as 28.5°. He noted that Mars had a "considerable but moderate ...
However, Newton's theorem of revolving orbits states that the angular speeds are related by multiplication: ω2 = kω1, where k is a constant. Combining these two equations shows that the angular speed of the precession equals Ω = (k − 1)ω1. Hence, Ω is constant only if ω1 is constant.
The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun in respect to the stars, its sidereal year, is about 686.98 Earth solar days (≈ 1.88 Earth years), or 668.5991 sols. Because of the eccentricity of Mars' orbit, the seasons are not of equal length.
The period of one revolution of a planet's orbit is known as its sidereal period or year. [62] A planet's year depends on its distance from its star; the farther a planet is from its star, the longer the distance it must travel and the slower its speed, since it is less affected by its star's gravity.