Problem

By observing a significantly smaller object orbiting a large celestial body, astronomers c...

By observing a significantly smaller object orbiting a large celestial body, astronomers can easily determine the mass of the larger. Appealing to Kepler’s third law of planetary motion, we know the mass of the large body varies directly with the cube of the mean distance to the smaller and inversely with the square of its orbital period. Write the variation equation. Using the mean Earth/Sun distance of 1.496 × 108 km and the Earth’s orbital period of 1 yr, the mass of the Sun has been calculated to be 1.98892 × 1030 kg. Given the orbital period of Mars is 1.88 yr, find its mean distance from the Sun.

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