tomatoherd wrote:
Was doing the ratios myself (sun:moon diameters, sun:moon distance from earth), playing with the coincidence of how we, of all systems, have total, but barely total eclipses, and noticed online that the polar and equatorial diameters of the sun differ by only 6 miles!
So..why is that? Doesn't the sun have a pretty good rotational speed/clip? Why no more flattening than that???
Because centrifugal forces scale inversely with the
SQUARE of the rotational period:
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Jupiter rotates every 9 h 55 m and has a flattening of 64,870 x 10
-6.
If Jupiter were to rotate only every 35 days it should have a flattening of ~9 x 10
-6.
The Sun has a flattening of ~9 x 10
-6.
Ergo, one should expect the sun to rotate only once every 35 days.
However, the Sun rotates once every 34.4 days at the poles and once every 25.05 days at the equator.
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The Earth rotates every 0.99727 days and has a flattening of 3,353 x 10
-6.
If Earth were to rotate only every 243 days it should have a flattening of ~0.0565 x 10
-6.
Venus rotates once every 243.025 days and has a flattening of ~0 within the accuracy of measurement.
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