Explain how Kepler's laws allow us to use the motion of an asteroid to find its average distance from the Sun

What will be an ideal response?


By watching it long enough to find its period of revolution around the Sun, we can use Kepler's third law to get the average distance by squaring the period in years, then finding the cube root of this value for the average distance of the asteroid from the Sun in astronomical units.

Physics & Space Science

You might also like to view...

A transverse wave travels at 190 m/s along the x-axis. If the period of the periodic vibrations of the wave is 2.6 milliseconds, then what is the wavelength of the wave?

A. 25.5 cm B. 35.4 cm C. 49.4 cm D. 50.3 cm E. 54.4 cm

Physics & Space Science

A laser beam (? = 694 nm) is incident on two slits 0.100 mm apart. Approximately how far apart (in m) will the bright interference fringes be on the screen 5.00 m from the double slits?

A. 3.47 × 10?3 B. 3.47 × 10?2 C. 3.47 × 10?4 D. 3.47 × 10?6 E. 3.47 × 10?5

Physics & Space Science

None of the pulsars emit pulses of visible light because

a. pulsars are too hot to emit visible light. b. pulsars contain black holes that won't let visible light escape. c. the gravitational field of a pulsar is so great that the visible light emitted is redshifted. d. pulsars are too far away for the visible light to be bright enough to be detected at Earth. e. A few pulsars do emit visible light pulses.

Physics & Space Science

Applications to Astronomy: Estimate the speed of recession of a galaxy that is 10 billion light-years away if H = 20 ? (c = 3.00 × 108 m/s)

A. 0.1c B. 0.3c C. 0.5c D. 0.7c

Physics & Space Science