Synodic Months to Minutes (mo (syn) to min)

1 synodic month equals 42,524.0496 minutes exactly.

1 synodic month = 42,524.0496 minutes

How to convert synodic months to minutes

To convert synodic months to minutes, multiply the number of synodic months by 42,524.0496. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply minutes by 0.00002351610464 (rounded).

minutes = synodic months × 42,524.0496

Example: 10 synodic months = 425,240.496 minutes.

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 synodic month varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Synodic Month (mo (syn))

AstronomicalCurrent unitApproximate value

About 29.53 days, the time from one new moon to the next. The basis of lunar and many religious calendars.

A synodic month is the span from one new moon to the next, when the Moon returns to the same position relative to the Sun as seen from Earth. Its mean length is about 29.53 days, or 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 3 seconds. The word synodic derives from a Greek term for meeting, since the Sun and Moon meet in the sky at each new moon.

Individual months are far from equal. Because the Moon's orbit is elliptical and the Sun perturbs it, a single lunation can run from about 29.27 to about 29.83 days, and in a given year the interval can differ from the mean by up to roughly seven hours. In 2001, for instance, lunations ranged from 29 days 19 hours in January to 29 days 7 hours in July.

Babylonian astronomers were the first to recognise this kind of month and to work out its mean length, and the quantity still underlies lunar and lunisolar calendars such as the Islamic, Hebrew and Chinese ones. It is longer than the sidereal month of about 27.3 days because Earth moves along its orbit while the Moon circles it.

1 synodic month = 2,551,442.976 seconds (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Lunar month

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

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