Orbits around the sun calculator
The purpose of this program is for the user to calculate the amount of orbits the planets of the Solar System had done in a certain time period.
Well not much, the user just need to be curious and type a amount of years. Pretty much have to give an age to the planet and see how many orbits it had taken around the sun up to that point.
The calculation is pretty simple. You just divide the amount of years by the time it takes to orbit the sun. The hard job was to find the time it takes each planet to complete an orbit and pick the right type of period. That's right, there are more than one period. The one that I choose was the sidereal period and it is definetly different from synodic period.
A quick explanation: The sidereal period is determined by an entire revolution (360 degrees) a celestial body, in this case planet, go around another, in this case is the sun. Imagine that the planet start at 12:00 on a clock and do a full revolution and end when it reach 12:00 again. Asumming the sun is at the center of the clock.
The synodic period is a bit more complicated because is not just the position of the planet what it counts also the rotation of the celestial body comes to play. The idea is that this period give pay atention to when the celestial bodies are facing each other. If you sart at 12:00 on a clock and you are facing the sun. If you move to 6:00 on the clock you will need to rotate exactly 180 degrees to be facing the sun again. Because each planet have a diferent rotation speed the synodic period is a bit more difficult to calculate because each planet will be different.