I am interested in the history of astronomy, most particularly how did astronomers over the last few hundred years come up with estimates of the mass of all the solar system bodies, i.e. the Earth, the moon, the Sun, the planets and their moons? And also all the distances and orbital parameters. It seems to me that they would have had to know at least some of those parameters in order to calculate the rest. I am interested in the whole process that they went through over the the last few centuries. Do you know of any books or websites about this?

Wikipedia has a decent page with many references to books and other pages.

History of astronomy @ Wikipedia

 

Web searching "history of astronomy" returns many more sources.

 

On the particulars of determining the mass of solar system bodies and orbital parameters, Newton's calculus was -and is- the fundamental tool.

Cosmo_Ken.

History is marvellous, i wish i had more time to read. I like googling, there is so much stuff out there. One thing leads to another.

NASA has lots of articles, including lots of interesting interviews (& transcripts) with old-timers giving real stories.

U might enjoy reading that science doesn't know the value of G or the masses of planets etc to much better than 1%.

But science does know the product Gm for planets to a great level of accuracy, allowing very accurate calculations (despite being in the dark about G & m individually).

And u might enjoy reading about how Newtonian gravity fails, leading to mysterious diurnal & other periodic anomalies for the Pioneer trajectory(s).

If a planet has a moon orbiting it then you time the period of the orbit and measure the distance of the moon from the planet. The mass is then calculated by a Keplers Law formula.

http://astro.physics.uiowa.edu/ITU/glossary/keplers-third-law/

 

Check it out for the formula used.

SiskosTheMan.

But, that there equation has G in it. So, the answer merely changes the question to how do u find G.

SiskosTheMan.

But, that there equation has G in it. So, the answer merely changes the question to how do u find G.

By using the Cavendish experiment.

!

Moderator Note

Tangent on discussion of G has been split.