Hi Ray,
> Info box for Mars and I saw the Hill sphere radius listed as 319.8. No units
> are listed, but I am assuming that is in thousands of kilometers although I'm
> not too sure about that because the value given for Jupiter is only 740.
units are listed, it's the Rp mentioned before the value. A search with Google
revealed that this is Radius of Planet, ie. that the Hill Sphere is Rp times the
Planet's radius (in whatever unit you choose). Hence this explains why Jupiter's
Hill Sphere as listed in Rp is "only" 740, which may not seem much compared to
much smaller Mars' 319.8. But multiply the Rp with the planet's radius, and the
difference is substantial indeed.
Now, even though Rp may be useful to some, it didn't impress me much until I had
it recalculated into kilometers, so that I realized that Jupiter's Hill Sphere
(ie. sphere of gravitational influence) is a whopping 0.35 AU. Small wonder it
has so many moons.
An entry in the Glossary which could explain the Hill Sphere, would have been
useful.
> BTW, my calculation for the Hill radius for Earth is about 1.5 million Km. I
> was wondering if you have a table of physical data for Earth anywhere in
> Guide. Such a table might be useful whenever someone wants to make
> comparisons of measurements of other bodies to those of Earth.
Indeed. The data on Earth is remarkably sparse.
Best regards,
Arild :)
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