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The corresponding values for Earth are currently 23 h 56 m 4.0916 s and 24 h 00 m 00.002 s, respectively, which yields a conversion factor of 1.027 491 2517 Earth days/sol: thus, Mars's solar day is only about 2.75% longer than Earth's; approximately 73 sols pass for every 75 Earth days.
The calculation takes into account that a Mars Sol is a few dozen minutes longer than an Earth day. NASA and secondary sources provide Sol numbers, but do not always give a UTC time or any Earth time zone for the events on Mars. NASA provides photographs from the events with a timestamp in local Mars time that facilitates the calculation. See here.
Sol (borrowed from the Latin word for sun) is a solar day on Mars; that is, a Mars-day. A sol is the apparent interval between two successive returns of the Sun to the same meridian (sundial time) as seen by an observer on Mars. It is one of several units for timekeeping on Mars. A sol is slightly longer than an Earth day.
The basic time periods from which the calendar is constructed are the Martian solar day (sometimes called a sol) and the Martian vernal equinox year.The sol is 39 minutes 35.244 seconds longer than the Terrestrial solar day, and the Martian vernal equinox year is 668.5907 sols in length (which corresponds to 686.9711 days on Earth).
It is based on the product of the count of Earth days past and the ratio of the length of Earth's solar day length (86400 seconds) with a Mars solar day (88775.24409 seconds), rounded to the nearest sol. That ratio comes from technical notes on time keeping on Mars from NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. [1] To use, type:
A mean solar day (what we normally measure as a "day") is the average time between local solar noons ("average" since this varies slightly over a year). Earth makes one rotation around its axis each sidereal day; during that time it moves a short distance (about 1°) along its orbit around the Sun.
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