Leap Year

A Leap Year is a calender year that contains an additional day added to keep the calender year synchronised with the astronomical year or seasonal year. 

Leap Year occurs once in every four years, which has 366 days including 29 February as an intercalary day.

2024-A Leap Year

How a leap year occurs? 

It takes approximately 365.25 days for Earth to orbit the Sun, which is called a Solar Year. We usually round the days in a calender year to 365. We add one day to our calender year for that missing partial day. That is a leap year.

To discuss further, a year is the amount of time it takes a planet to orbit its star one time. A day is the amount of time it takes a planet to finish one rotation on its axis. 

Our Earth takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours to orbit its star the Sun. It takes approximately 24 hour & 1 day to rotate on its axis. It means, our year is not an exact number of days.

Because of that, most years, we round the days in a year down to 365. However, that leftover piece of a day doesn't disappear. To make sure we count that extra part of a day, we add one day to the calender approximately every four years.

Not only Earth, but other planets also have leap years. Leap years happen because a planet's orbit around the Sun(year) and rotation on its axis(day) are not perfectly in line. This is true for almost every planet in our solar system.

For Example, the Mars has more leap years than regular years! A year on Mars is 668 sols, or Martian days. However, it takes 668.6 sols for Mars to go around the Sun. So, you would sometimes have to add a sol to help the calender catch up. In a 10 year period, four of the year would have 668 sols and six of the years would be leap years with 669 sols.

Note: Contents published in this blog has been taken from various sources. A detailed study is recommended before using them in any medium.