Saturday, March 21, 2026

Checking Kepler's Third Law

For Earth and the inner planets (you'll need to view this in landscape mode on a phone):

Planet

Orbit radius (r) in AUs

r^3

Period (t) in years

t^2

r^3/t^2

Mercury

~sin 22.5*

~0.06

7/29

0.06

0.96

Venus

~sin 46* 

~0.37

8/13

0.38

0.98

Earth

1

1

1

1

1


(*approximate average greatest elongation in degrees, taken from data here)

So far, so good, but to extend this to the outer planets, I'll need a method of determining the orbital radii for those. ðŸ¤”

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