MARTIAN TIME

"What day is it? Do days exist without calendars? Does time pass when there are no human hands left to wind the clocks?"
     -- Howard Koch, Invasion from Mars, the 1938 radio play based on H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds

Martian Time Topics by Author
Martian Time Topics by Category
Current Date and Time on Mars
The Martian Time Virtual Conference
Frequently Asked Questions
Mars Fact Sheet
An Introduction to Martian Time
Mare Chronium: A Brief History of Martian Time
Bad Time on Mars
Educational Activities and Resources
Utilities

Find all about
Time and date and astronomy on Mars
at Wikiverse

Find all about time and date and astronomy on Mars


This site documents everything that is known about keeping time on Mars. It documents more than 80 Martian calendars for defining the date on Mars and more than 40 Martian clock systems for keeping time on Mars. The earliest known Martian calendar was described in Percy Greg's 1880 utopian novel, Across the Zodiac. Another early Martian calendar was the joint invention of A. E. Douglass and W. H. Pickering, original members of the staff at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Edgar Rice Burroughs' description of a Martian calendar in several of his novels were inaccurate and mutually inconsistent. The first accurate Martian calendar, complete with weeks, months, and a starting point of the calendar year, was developed in 1936 by Robert G. Aitken, director emeritus of the Lick Observatory in California. The first operational Martian timepiece was designed in 1954 by I. M. Levitt of the Fels Observatory in Philadelphia; it displayed the time and date on Earth, as well as the time on Mars and the date on Mars as defined by a Martian calendar of his own invention. This site documents more than 80 Martian calendars and more than 40 Martian clock systems for showing the time on Mars. A Martian calendar becomes more necessary as more robotic probes are sent to Mars and the human telepresence on Mars becomes more extended and sustained.