The atronomer was studying the moon of jupiter called lo. He noticed that measur

Question

The atronomer was studying the moon of jupiter called lo. He noticed that measurements taken in the spring when used to predict the position of lo in the fall were off by 18.177 minutes of time. It had to be dur to the extra distance that light was traveling due to the movement of the earth around the sun from spring to fall. Using the fact that Jupiter has an orbit of 7.78 x 10^11 meters from the sun and the earth has an orbit 1.496 x 10^11 meters from the sun, and making the assumption that jupiter hardly moves in its orbit as the earth goes from spring to fall, determine teh value of the speed of light that Roemer deduced from these observations.

Explanation / Answer

Since the diameter of the earth orbit is 2 * 1.496 * 10E11 m

D = 2.992 * 10E11 m the extra distance traveled by light

t = 18.177 * 60 = 1091 sec

V = D / t = 2.74 * 10E8 m/s for the measured speed

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