Module 3 · Kepler's laws
Venus and Earth draw a rose
Interactive 5 min
Venus orbits in 224.7 days and the Earth in 365.3 [1]. Thirteen Venus years are almost exactly eight Earth years, so every eight years the pair repeat their arrangement. Draw a line between them every few days and the near-repeats trace a five-petalled rose.
Try this. Count the petals. The rose is nearly perfect, not perfect: the pattern drifts by about two days per cycle.
Sources: [1] Venus Fact Sheet (NASA GSFC NSSDC)
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The rose that Venus draws
Resonances leave signatures you can draw. Venus circles the Sun every 224.7 days, Earth every 365.3 — close enough to 13 laps against 8 that the pair almost exactly repeat their arrangement every eight years. Draw a line between the two planets every few days and those near-repeats weave a five-petalled rose. It is nearly perfect, not perfect: the pattern drifts by about two days per cycle, so the flower slowly rotates. This is the same near-resonance that puts Venus back in the same evening-star position every eight years, and it is the sort of pattern that convinced ancient astronomers the heavens ran on clockwork.
Text version of this interactive
The rose that Venus draws
Resonances leave signatures you can draw. Venus circles the Sun every 224.7 days, Earth every 365.3 — close enough to 13 laps against 8 that the pair almost exactly repeat their arrangement every eight years. Draw a line between the two planets every few days and those near-repeats weave a five-petalled rose. It is nearly perfect, not perfect: the pattern drifts by about two days per cycle, so the flower slowly rotates. This is the same near-resonance that puts Venus back in the same evening-star position every eight years, and it is the sort of pattern that convinced ancient astronomers the heavens ran on clockwork.
About this interactive
- Licence
- MIT
- Credits
- © 2026 Mateusz Wojczal. Earth texture: Solar System Scope, CC BY 4.0. Three.js (MIT). Inter and Roboto Mono (SIL OFL 1.1).
- Source
- https://github.com/ulams-dev/ulams/tree/main/demo-content/gravity