Re: Programming a calendar system

Quoting Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>:

> Star masses (especially those on the main sequence) are confined within
> fairly narrow limits, and the Sun makes a good
> average. Stars with larger volumes have lower densities than the Sun, and
> vice versa, so the mass M in Kepler's third law
> works out to be roughly similar.
Your conception of "roughly similar" would appear to be broader than mine - main
sequence stars span a couple of orders of magnitude in each direction from the
Sun; from tiny red dwarfs with less than a percent of the Sun's mass to blue
giants with dozens of times its mass.

Now, if we restrict ourselves to main sequence stars that are likely to have
planets inhabitable for a long time (on an evolutionary time scale), the
variation is much smaller. Exactly how much smaller depends on exactly you
consider to be sufficiently sun-like to support earth-style life, but unless
you're very pessimistic on this point, we're still looking at a fairly big
spread - well above what I'd consider roughly similar.

                                                          Andreas

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