Orbit of Mars relative to the orbits of inner Solar System planetsOrbit of Mars and other Inner Solar System planetsAn animation to explain the (apparent) retrograde motion of Mars, using actual 2020 planet positionsMars seen through an 16-inch amateur telescope, at 2020 opposition
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, and this causes a large difference between the aphelion and perihelion distances—they are 1.6660 and 1.3814 AU.[5][citation needed]
^Simon, J.L.; Bretagnon, P.; Chapront, J.; Chapront-Touzé, M.; Francou, G.; Laskar, J. (February 1994). "Numerical expressions for precession formulae and mean elements for the Moon and planets". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 282 (2): 663–683. Bibcode:1994A&A...282..663S.
^Jean Meeus, Astronomical Formulæ for Calculators. (Richmond, VA: Willmann-Bell, 1988) 99. Elements by F. E. Ross
^In ephemeris days of 86 400 seconds. The sidereal and anomalistic years are 686.980 days and 686.996 days long, respectively. (About a 20 minute difference). The sidereal year is the time taken to revolve around the Sun relative to a fixed reference frame. More precisely, the sidereal year is one way to express the rate of change of the mean longitude at one instant, with respect to a fixed equinox. The calculation shows how long it would take for the longitude to change 360 degrees at the given rate.
The anomalistic year is the time span between successive perihelion or aphelion passages. This may be calculated in the same manner as the sidereal year, but the mean anomaly is used.
^Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (Richmond, VA: Willmann-Bell, 1998) 238. The formula by Ramanujan is accurate enough.
^The averages between 1850 and 2150. The extreme values in that range are 1.66635 and 1.38097 AU
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