Is the mass of mercury 1/60000000?
3782 observations of Venus, made between 1914 and 1977 were used to estimate the mass of Mercury. To calculate Mercury's mass and, simultaneously, the initial conditions needed to integrate Venus's orbit, the simplex method was used. This method, in contrast to a differential correction, p...
Guardado en:
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| Formato: | Articulo Comunicacion |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
| Publicado: |
1990
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| Acceso en línea: | http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/142885 |
| Aporte de: |
| id |
I19-R120-10915-142885 |
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| record_format |
dspace |
| institution |
Universidad Nacional de La Plata |
| institution_str |
I-19 |
| repository_str |
R-120 |
| collection |
SEDICI (UNLP) |
| language |
Español |
| topic |
Astronomía Galaxia |
| spellingShingle |
Astronomía Galaxia Branham, R.L. Is the mass of mercury 1/60000000? |
| topic_facet |
Astronomía Galaxia |
| description |
3782 observations of Venus, made between 1914 and 1977 were used to estimate the mass of Mercury. To calculate Mercury's mass and, simultaneously, the initial conditions needed to integrate Venus's orbit, the simplex method was used. This method, in contrast to a differential correction, permits a full nonlinear solution to the problem and is applicable with any norm of the residuals, not just the L2 norm – the least squares criterion. The mass calculated from the least squares criterion is 1/60123000, with a range, as given by the covariance matrix, of 1/10670000 to 1/41285000. This agrees well with the official IAU value. But if we use the L1 norm, an extremely robust norm, the calculated value becomes 1/8970000. Although this lies within the range given by least squares, it nevertheless differs by thirty three per cent from the least squares value. And in any event one should not pay too much attention to the formal errors given by the covariance matrix. The optimum of a least squares solution, and consequently the reliability of the formal mean errors given by the covariance matrix, depends on a series of assumptions. But statistical tests show that some of these assumptions are invalid for the observations used in this study. It will be important to investigate why two distinct norms give such discordant results. |
| format |
Articulo Comunicacion |
| author |
Branham, R.L. |
| author_facet |
Branham, R.L. |
| author_sort |
Branham, R.L. |
| title |
Is the mass of mercury 1/60000000? |
| title_short |
Is the mass of mercury 1/60000000? |
| title_full |
Is the mass of mercury 1/60000000? |
| title_fullStr |
Is the mass of mercury 1/60000000? |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Is the mass of mercury 1/60000000? |
| title_sort |
is the mass of mercury 1/60000000? |
| publishDate |
1990 |
| url |
http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/142885 |
| work_keys_str_mv |
AT branhamrl isthemassofmercury160000000 |
| bdutipo_str |
Repositorios |
| _version_ |
1764820459059150850 |