Convert Year (Julian) (y (Julian)) to Year (Sidereal) (y (sidereal)) instantly.
About these units
Year (Julian) (y (Julian))
A Julian year is defined as exactly 365.25 days, reflecting the structure of the Julian calendar introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. This calendar assumed a fixed year length with a leap year every four years. Although revolutionary in its simplicity, the Julian year overestimates the actual tropical year by about 11 minutes, causing the calendar date to drift slowly relative to the seasons—an issue that accumulated to more than 10 days by the 16th century. Astronomers still use the Julian year as a standardized unit for long-term timekeeping, especially when expressing stellar motions, orbital periods, and cosmological timescales. Its simplicity and fixed length make it ideal for scientific definition even though it is obsolete as a civil calendar.
Year (Sidereal) (y (sidereal))
A sidereal year is the time it takes Earth to complete one full orbit relative to distant fixed stars, lasting approximately 365.25636 days. This is the "true" orbital period of Earth in space, unaffected by precession-related shifts of the equinoxes. Sidereal years are used in celestial mechanics, spacecraft navigation, and modeling solar system dynamics. The slight difference between the tropical and sidereal year (about 20 minutes) reveals how Earth's wobbling axis alters how we perceive time, creating two distinct astronomical year definitions.