S
spacechump
Guest
<i>You wrote:<br />"131 million km = 0.8756797 AUs<br />1/(0.8756797)^2=1.30 the sunlight of earth...an increase"<br /><br />Explain clearer, please. </i><br /><br />The distance from the sun to the earth is 149 million kilometers and is defined as 1 Astronomical Unit. The conversion of 131 million kilometers to AUs is:<br /><br />(131,000,000) / (149,000,000) = .876 AUs<br /><br />The inverse square states the as you travel outward from a radiation source the luminosity falls off as the square of the distance from the object. So in this case the comet is closer to the sun.<br /><br />Therefore using the inverse square equation 1/d^2 where d is the distance in AUs you get 1.30 times the amount of sunlight at any given point on a surface.