Bode's Law and Saturn's Satellites

Abstract

THOUGH no satisfactory physical explanation has yet been found for Bode‘s law of the approximately regular progression of the mean distances of the planets from the sun, the law holds good for all the planets except Mercury and Neptune and should not, therefore, be regarded as merely a coincidental truth. If the distance of Mercury itself from the sun is left out of consideration, and Mercury's orbit is taken as the starting-point, then, representing the distance from Mercury‘s orbit to that of Venus by the number 3, the distance of the other planetary orbits from that of Mercury’s are roughly in the geometrical progression 6, 12, 24, etc.