Explained: How long is a day on each planet? Venus and Saturn still tease scientists | Explained News, The Indian Express

Explained: How long is a day on each planet? Venus and Saturn still tease scientists | Explained News, The Indian Express

Written by Kabir Firaque |New Delhi |Updated: November 4, 2019 3:18:30 pm

Explained: How long is a day on each planet? Venus and Saturn still tease scientists

Astronomers are still looking for an accurate assessment of the length of a day on Venus, while Saturn continues to deceive us. Two new studies underline how much there is still left to learn.

A gas giant, by definition, it has no solid surface features for scientists to track. For Jupiter, scientists figured out the rotation period by observing patterns in radio signals from there. (Photo: NASA)

Centuries ago, the ancients divided the day into 24 equal parts, or hours. Today, we look at this from the other point of view: the Earth takes approximately 24 hours to rotate once. Among other planets, Mars spins once in a little under 25 Earth-hours, while Jupiter spins so fast that its day is less than 10 hours long.