Arean calendar

The Arean calendar is a distant variant of the Darian Calendar that was been adopted in the early 22nd century by the various people of Mars, with some notable differences.

• Solar Storms Calendar Converter

Mechanics

The Martian epoch begins as with the Darian Calendar, on March 11th, 1609 Earth (Gregorian) time, Midnight GMT, as 'year 0'.

Timekeeping on Mars makes use of the 'extended second', which is 1.027491251041666... seconds long. This preserves a 24-hour 'sol'. Typically, many use the terms 'second', 'minute', 'hour', 'day', 'week', and 'month' interchangibly, though when accuracy is noted, standard seconds are assumed.

Sol

In Earth time, a sol averages 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35.24409 seconds long over the course of a tropical year, or 88775.24409 seconds. This creates some difficulty, since it is close enough to be conveniently considered a day yet not close enough for very accurate tracking.

A day on Mars is sometimes called a sol, primarily to differentiate it from the term 'day' on Earth. Because of the extended second, a Martian day still has 24 hours, each with sixty minutes, each with sixty seconds, even though a given second is slightly longer.

Month

Each month is divided into four weeks of seven days, totalling 28 days per month, every month.

The weekdays are named in order: Heliosol, Phobosol, Deimosol, Venusol, Terrasol, Jovesol and Lunasol, named after seven of the most brilliant planetary objects seen from the planet's surface (Saturn is omitted to avoid confusion with Saturday). As Phobos and Deimos are consumed in the voracious appetite of human industry, their memory will at least be aided by such naming.

Year

The Arean calendar uses the average tropical year. For Mars, this is roughly 668.5921 sols.

A year normally has 24 months. Every eighth year, the last month is dropped from the calendar. Every 304 years, the drop is skipped and the year proceeds normally.

Usage

Shortly after the development of the Martian calendar, the Helios Calendar was designed and accepted. The instantanious communication made available by tachyon transmission and later halon manipulation quickly eroded the popularity of this calendar. After the Purge, it is mostly used as an oddity, and sometimes to throw others off in a conversation.