Minutes to Sidereal Days (min to d (sid))

1 minute equals 0.0006963457706 sidereal days (rounded).

1 minute = 0.0006963457706 sidereal days

How to convert minutes to sidereal days

To convert minutes to sidereal days, multiply the number of minutes by 0.0006963457706. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply sidereal days by 1,436.068175.

sidereal days = minutes × 0.0006963457706

Example: 10 minutes = 0.006963457706 sidereal days.

Months and years are not constant. This site uses the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days, so one 'year' converts to 365.2425 days, not 365; use 'common year' for exactly 365 days.

Approximate value. Standards for the sidereal day varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Minute (min)

Metric (SI)Current unit

60 seconds. Defined as one sixtieth of an hour.

Minute means small, not short. It comes from the Latin pars minuta prima, the first small part, produced when sixty-based division was applied to the hour. Al-Biruni is credited with dividing the hour into minutes, seconds, thirds and fourths around the year 1000, and Roger Bacon used the same scheme in 1267. For everyday life the minute needed hardware: Jost Bürgi is said to have made the first clock with a minute hand, for Tycho Brahe in 1577, and watches got minute hands only after Thomas Tompion's hairspring of 1675 made them accurate enough.

A minute is 60 seconds, exactly 1/60 of an hour, and the BIPM's SI Brochure is the reference for its symbol, min. Civil timekeeping can bend the rule: because of leap seconds, a UTC minute occasionally holds 61 seconds. A negative leap second would produce a 59-second minute, but that has never happened in more than 40 years. People use the minute for cooking, lectures and phone calls, and the same name serves for the arcminute, which is a sixtieth of a degree.

1 minute = 60 seconds (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Minute; BIPM: SI Brochure, 9th edition; NIST: the second and the SI redefinition

Sidereal Day (d (sid))

AstronomicalCurrent unitApproximate value

About 86,164.09 seconds (23 h 56 min 4 s), one rotation of the Earth relative to the stars.

Sidereal comes from the Latin word for star, and the unit measures how long Earth takes to turn once relative to the distant stars rather than to the Sun. The figure used here is about 86,164.09 seconds, or 23 hours 56 minutes 4.09 seconds. NASA's Earth fact sheet gives the same period as 23.9345 hours.

The sidereal day is about four minutes shorter than the mean solar day because Earth also moves roughly one degree along its orbit during each rotation, so it must turn slightly further before the Sun is back on the meridian. Over a year this adds up to one extra turn, giving about 366.24 sidereal days against 365.24 solar days.

For centuries astronomers measured it by timing stars as they crossed the meridian and checking observatory clocks against star catalogues. From the 1970s, radio methods such as very long baseline interferometry and pulsar timing proved more precise, and since 2003 the Earth Rotation Angle has replaced the older sidereal time conventions in formal use.

1 sidereal day = 86,164.0905 seconds (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Sidereal time; NASA Earth Fact Sheet

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