On Oct 10, 2011, at 6:02 PM, Alaconius <[email protected]> wrote: > Here is what I was thinking... > > The planet's position will always give you TWO sides of the triangle. Why? > Because the orbit itself is defined to be an ellipse with a known formula > (Look up the formulas for Ellipses using Polar Co-ordinates to see what I'm > talking about). As a consequence, any two points on the orbit will be a > known distance to the center of the sun. As a consequence of this, simple > trigonometry allows us to solve for the third side of the triangle if you > know the two of three sides of the triangle.
Absolutely true for a right triangle, which is not what you have. But, you may be able do do what you want given the two sides and the angle between them. Determining the length of the third side will not be as simple as using a single trig function or the pythagorean theorem, but it's not rocket science either. (Yes, I'm hilarious.) -- Captain Joy [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
