The sidereal day is a unit of time used by astronomers and is derived from the SI unit system. We have used the symbol d-sr.
Sidereal literally means "of the stars". Otherwise known as the "orbital period", it defines the time period taken for two point masses to orbit each other.
On Earth, we used the solar day to regularise time and this represents the period taken to orbit the sun. The sidereal day (or stellar day) is the time taken for the earth to rotate with respect to a distant star and equals 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.0905 seconds (or 86164.1 s, 23.934 h).
The month is a unit of time and is a multiple of an SI base unit with the symbol mo.
There are 100s of definitions of a month that have been established, reviewed and adopted over the course of history but the most common around the world today are the months in the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
There are 12 months in the Julian and Gregorian year; averaging 30.4368 days in each. They are labelled January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December.
There is a famous rhyme to help remember how many days are in each month that goes “Thirty days has September, April, June and November – all the rest have thirty-one. Except February which has 28 or 29 in a leap year.”
Many cultures use the moon’s cycle (the lunar cycle) to define which month they are in.