The circumstance in which a satellite spins on its axis in the same time as it takes to orbit a planet, thereby keeping the same face turned towards the planet at all times; also known as captured rotation. Most major satellites in the Solar System, including our own Moon, are in synchronous rotation, as a consequence of tidal action. In addition, in some short-period binary star systems the tidal interaction between the stars is sufficient to make one or both stars rotate synchronously. Examples are contact binaries, in which both stars rotate synchronously, and cataclysmic binaries, where the mass-losing star rotates synchronously but the white dwarf does so only in the magnetic AM Herculis systems.