Relation Between The Sidereal and Synodic Periods
Table of synodic periods in the Solar System, relative to Earth:
| Sidereal Period (a) | Synodic Period (a) | Synodic Period (d) | |
| Solar surface | 0.069 (25.3 days) | 0.074 | 27.3 |
| Mercury | 0.241 (88.0 days) | 0.317 | 115.9 |
| Venus | 0.615 (225 days) | 1.599 | 583.9 |
| Earth | 1 (365.256 solar days) | — | — |
| Moon | 0.0748 | 0.0809 | 29.5306 |
| Mars | 1.881 | 2.135 | 779.9 |
| 4 Vesta | 3.629 | 1.380 | 504.0 |
| 1 Ceres | 4.600 | 1.278 | 466.7 |
| 10 Hygiea | 5.557 | 1.219 | 445.4 |
| Jupiter | 11.86 | 1.092 | 398.9 |
| Saturn | 29.46 | 1.035 | 378.1 |
| Uranus | 84.32 | 1.012 | 369.7 |
| Neptune | 164.8 | 1.006 | 367.5 |
| 134340 Pluto | 248.1 | 1.004 | 366.7 |
| 136199 Eris | 557 | 1.002 | 365.9 |
| 90377 Sedna | 12050 | 1.00001 | 365.1 |
In the case of a planet's moon, the synodic period usually means the Sun-synodic period. That is to say, the time it takes the moon to complete its illumination phases, completing the solar phases for an observer on the planet's surface —the Earth's motion does not determine this value for other planets, because an Earth observer is not orbited by the moons in question. For example, Deimos' synodic period is 1.2648 days, 0.18% longer than Deimos' sidereal period of 1.2624 d.
Read more about this topic: Orbital Period
Famous quotes containing the words relation between, relation, sidereal and/or periods:
“You know there are no secrets in America. It’s quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe. The way is through daily ritual, and is an affair of the individual and the household, a ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of the kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath, and the last.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or despatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)