Abstract
A surprisingly large amount of information on our solar system can be gained
from simple measurements of the apparent angular diameters of the sun and the
moon. This information includes the average density of the sun, the distance
between earth and moon, the radius of the moon, and the gravitational constant.
In this note it is described how these and other quantities can be obtained by
simple earthbound measurements of angles and times only, without using any
explicit information on distances between celestial bodies. The pedagogical and
historical aspects of these results are also discussed briefly.
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