Thread: Kepler mass???
View Single Post
  #3 (permalink)  
Old 05-November-2009, 01:28 AM
Hornblower's Avatar
Hornblower Hornblower is offline
Established Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Falls Church, VA (near Washington, DC)
Posts: 1,985
Default

We need to remember that Kepler had no dynamic theory of what was going on here. This was an empirical kinematic exercise on the special case of planets orbiting the Sun.

I don't know whether or not he did a similar exercise on Jupiter's moons. Such an exercise would yield a similar equation relating the orbital period and radius, but with a different proportionality constant.

The general case would be of the form P2 = KR3, with Jupiter's K being about 1,000 times that of the Sun. As a result of Newton's work we now know that K = 1/M, where M is the mass of the primary object.
Reply With Quote