Twenty four hours a day and three hundred sixty-five days a year. These numbers are so prominently known that we tend to forget that they only belong to the Earth, and even here with an inaccuracy factor of nearly 4 minutes per day. So how long do a day and a year take on the other planets in our Solar system?
Mercury
Rotation: 59 Earth days, however, due to the slow rotation, the length of one day is 176 Earth days
Revolution: 88 Earth days
Thanks to these factors, one day on Mercury is longer than one year.
Venus
Rotation: 243 Earth days and it rotates the opposite direction from Earth
Revolution: 224 Earth days
Again one day on Venus is than longer than one year.
Rotation: 23 hours 56 minutes and 4,1 seconds
Revolution: 365, 25 days
Mars
Rotation: 24 hours 37 minutes and 22 seconds = 1 day (sol)
Revolution: 686,9 Earth days (sols)
Jupiter
Rotation: 9 Earth hours 55 minutes and 30 seconds, and it‘s not the same everywhere.
Revolution: 4,332.59 Earth days, which is almost 12 Earth years.
Saturn
Rotation: 10 Earth hours and 14 minutes
Revolution: 10 759 Earth days, which is approximately 29 Earth years.
Uranus
Rotation: 17 Earth hours 14 minutes. Due to the extreme positioning of the axis of the planet there are only places on the Equator, facing the Sun, that have a similar sunrise sunset period to the Earth‘s. One day and one night at the poles takes 42 Earth days each.
Revolution: 30,685 Earth days (84 Earth years)
Neptune
Rotation: 16 Earth hours, 6 minutes. The poles nevertheles rotate faster than the Equator and therefore there is appx a 4 hour difference in rotation between Neptune’s Poles and its Equator.
Revolution: 60190 Earth days (164.8 Earth years)
Photos: Shutterstock / Graphic Design: Martina Advaney
Support us!
All your donations will be used to pay the magazine’s journalists and to support the ongoing costs of maintaining the site.
Share this post
Interested in co-operating with us?
We are open to co-operation from writers and businesses alike. You can reach us on our email at [email protected]/[email protected] and we will get back to you as quick as we can.
