Harmonic law — the series · Astronomy & Celestial Mechanics

Period against size for the planets, around the Sun. Orbital period against semi-major axis on logarithmic axes. The line has slope exactly three-halves — the harmonic law — and the measured bodies sit on it.

The law that links period to size, and weighs everything

Kepler found that the square of the period goes as the cube of the orbit. Newton found the constant of proportionality, and that constant is a mass — which is how every mass in astronomy has been obtained since.

part 1 · orbits

The mass correction against the mass. Each planet's departure from the massless harmonic law, against its own mass in solar units, on logarithmic axes. The exact law puts every point on the diagonal. Jupiter and Saturn are the only planets whose mass correction is larger than the perturbations from everything else, and Saturn's measured departure has the opposite sign.

The third law is wrong by the mass of the planet

Kepler's harmonic law says the square of the period goes as the cube of the size. Newton's version has one more term in it, and the term is the orbiting body's own mass — negligible for a planet, decisive for a binary star, and the reason a period can be converted into a mass at all.

part 2 · orbits

A doubling rule, and the planet that broke it. Each planet's real semi-major axis against the value the Titius–Bode rule 0.4 + 0.3 × 2ⁿ gives it, both in astronomical units on logarithmic axes; points on the diagonal are fitted exactly. The rule gives the Earth 1.0 by construction and fits Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn within a few per cent. It needed the value n = 3 left empty until Ceres was found in its slot in 1801, and it predicted Uranus, discovered in 1781, within 2%. Neptune, discovered in 1846 by a calculation that assumed the rule, sits 22% inside its predicted place, and Pluto occupies the place Neptune should have had. Mercury is given n = −∞, which is a free choice made to fit it. The labels give each body's departure from the rule.

A spacing law that random orbits obey

The planets' distances roughly double from one to the next, and a rule written down in 1766 predicted the asteroid belt and Uranus before either was found. It failed on Neptune, and the reason it worked at all turns out to be that almost any set of orbits forbidden to crowd each other looks geometric on a logarithmic scale — as a test against thousands of random systems shows.

part 3 · orbits

A moonlet's period measures its primary's density. The orbital period of a small satellite against the radius of its orbit in units of the primary's radius, both logarithmic, for primaries of bulk density 1, 2, 3.5 g/cm³. The size of the asteroid cancels: a moonlet at five radii from a body of 2 g/cm³ takes 26 hours whether the body is a kilometre or a hundred across. At one radius the curves give the spin period at which a strengthless rubble pile flies apart — 3.3, 2.3 and 1.8 hours. Didymos–Dimorphos, at 3.1 radii and 11.92 hours, gives 2.4 g/cm³; 1999 KW4, at 3.9 radii and 17.42 hours, gives 2.1 g/cm³.

A moonlet that weighs a pile of rubble

Put Kepler's third law round an asteroid and its size cancels: a moonlet's period depends only on how many of the asteroid's radii away it orbits and on the asteroid's density. So the first asteroid moon ever seen, a mile-wide speck beside Ida, turned a picture into a density — and the density came out too low for solid rock. A fifth to a half of the asteroids weighed this way is empty space.

part 4 · orbits