The Sun, the Moon, and Convexity

Noah Samuel Brannen

Sam Brannen (brannen@sonoma.edu) has a bachelor's

degree in Asian Studies from the University of California at
Berkeley, and received his doctorate in Mathematics
in 1994 from the University of California at Davis. He
specialized in convex geometry, and his thesis advisor was
Don Chakerian. Sam is currently an Assistant Professor of
Mathematics at Sonoma State University in California.

Introduction

This paper had its genesis in a conversation I had with Wayne Rossman in 1996. He
mentioned that my thesis advisor, Don Chakerian of the University of California at
Davis, had once told him that the path the moon makes about the sun is convex. My
first thought upon hearing this was that it couldn't possibly be true, for in my mind I
pictured this path as looking something like the curve in Figure 1. When I met with
Dr. Chakerian soon after, I asked him about this problem. He responded that he had
never mentioned it to Wayne; in fact he had never heard of this result, and moreover
he didn't believe it. He felt that since the path of the moon would at times be inside
Earth's orbit, and at other times outside the orbit, it could not be convex. I pointed
out that one could draw a convex hexagon and a circle in such a way that part of the
hexagon was interior to the circle, and part was exterior. This made Dr. Chakerian less
skeptical, and we set out to see if we could prove the assertion.

A Lunar Model

We decided to model the simplest idealized case, with a point moon moving with
constant speed in a circular orbit centered at a point planet, which in turn revolves

Figure 1. A lunar path with loops

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with constant speed around a circular orbit centered at a point sun. This allows the
following representation.
Take the distance from the moon to the planet to be 1, the distance from the planet to
the sun to be d, and let p be the number of times the moon revolves around the planet
as the planet orbits once around the sun. Then, relative to an appropriate coordinate
system centered at the sun, our assumption is that the path of the moon is given by the
parametric equations

x(0) = dcosO + cos p$,

y(Q) = dsinO + sin pO,

for 0 > 0. Here d and p need not be integers, but could be any real numbers satisfying
d > 1 and p > 0. With this parameterization, the sun, the moon, and the planet are
collinear when 0=0, and both the planet and the moon revolve in counterclockwise
directions around their respective circles.
This model has a Ptolemaic flavor, since a curve with these parametric equations is
a generalized epicycloid. It can be viewed as the locus of a point fixed at unit distance
from the center of a circle of radius - rolling around the outside of a circle of radius
d(p-l)
P

If p > 2 is an integer and d = p, we have a point attached to the circumference of

a circle of radius 1 rolling around a circle of radius p ? 1, thus generating a standard
epicycloid with p ? 1 cusps. The case d = p = 6 is illustrated in Figure 2. As we
shall see, paths with loops occur when d < p, such as in Figure 1, where d = 6 and
p = 12.
Since the curvature is given by

x'y" - y'x"
K =

(xf2 + y,2)i'

the sign of the curvature is determined by the sign of

x'y" - y'x" = p3+d2 + dp(p + 1) COS(p - \)Q.

Figure 2. A lunar path with cusps

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 Since ? 1 < cos(p ? 1)0 < 1 for all 0, the sign will not change if either

p3+d2>dp(p + \), (1)

or

p3+d2 <-dp(p + \). (2)

Since p is nonnegative and d is positive, (2) is not pos

The inequality in (1) can be rewritten as

p3 + d2 - dp(p + l) = (d- p)(d - p2) >

Therefore the curvature of the path of the moon will n

d ? p and d ? p2 have the same sign. Since d > 1, the
when p < 1. If p > 1, then the curvature will not ch
or d > p2. We will now show that d < p leads to the
those in Figure 1.
We use the easily established fact that a loop occurs if
orientation determined by the position vector and the v
the sign of their cross-product changes. The position ve

r(0) = (dcosO + cospO, ds'mO + sinpO),

and the velocity vector is therefore

y(0) = (?dsinO ? psinpO,dcosO + pcospO),

with cross product

(0, 0, d2 + p + d(p + 1) cos(p - 1)0).

For all values of 0,

d2 + p - d(p + 1) < d2 + p + d(p + 1) cos(p - 1)0 < d2 + p + d(p + 1),

or

(d - p)(d -\)<d2 + p + d(p + \) cos(p - 1)0 <(d + p)(d + 1).

Therefore the cross product vector will not change orientation if (d ? p)(d ~ 1) > 0
or if (d + p)(d + 1) < 0. The second inequality is impossible since d is positive and
p is nonnegative. Since d > 1, for the first inequality we must have d > p.
When 0 = -^y, d2 + p + d(p + 1) cos(p - 1)0 = d2 + p - d(p + 1), and when
d < p the right hand side of this equality is negative. When 0 = 2(7r_1), d2 + p +
d(p + 1) cos(p ? 1)0 = d2 + p, and the right hand side of this equality is always
positive when d is positive and p is nonnegative. Thus the cross product vector changes
orientation when d < p, and the path of the moon has loops in this case.
What about when d = pl The denominator of the curvature expression is

(xa + y'2) 5 = (d2 + 2dp sin 0 sin pO + p2 + 2dp cos 0 cos pO) \.

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 Figure 3. Convex lunar paths

WhenJ = p, thisis [2p2(\ + cos(p - 1)0)]2.

When 0 = -J~, this expression vanishes, and the curvature is undefined. The path
of the moon has cusps in this case (see Figure 2).
If the path of the moon has no loops and its curvature never changes sign, we shall
say that the path is locally convex. In case p is a rational number, this path follows a
locally convex closed (but not necessarily simple) curve, and if p is a positive integer,
it follows a closed convex curve (see Figure 3). We see then that our model yields
locally convex paths if and only if d > p2 or p < 1. Since d > 1, we always have
d > p2 when p < 1. Therefore we can say that locally convex paths occur in our
model precisely when d > p2.
Figure 3 shows the path of the moon for four choices of d and p that yield locally
convex paths. Clockwise from the upper left figure, the values of d and p are: d = 9,
p = 3; d = 9, p = 2.5; d = 16, p = 4; and d = 25, p = 5.
We know that loops occur when d < p, cusps occur when d = p, and that locally
convex paths occur when d > p2. What happens for p < d < p2l We know the paths
will not be locally convex and will have no loops or cusps. Figure 4 shows examples
of such paths, for d = 10, p = 6 and d = 8, p = 4.

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 Figure 4. Non-convex lunar paths

Finally the question that motivated us, what about the path our moon makes around
our sun? The distance from the sun to the earth is roughly 389.2 times the distance
from the earth to the moon (this calculation is based on the lengths of the semimajor
axes of the orbits of the earth and the moon). As the earth revolves once around the
sun, the moon revolves approximately 13.4 times around the earth [1]. Therefore for
this case, we have d = 389.2 and p = 13.4, so we are safely in the d > p2 range. Even
though the orbits concerned here are elliptical, they are close enough to being circular
to conclude that the path of our moon around the sun is (locally) convex.
Other behaviors occur in our solar system. In our model, the path followed by the
moon Callisto of the planet Jupiter has no loops but is not locally convex (d = 727.5,
p = 259.6), while the moon Io of the same planet does have loops in its path (d =
1846.2, p = 2448.8) [1].

Conclusion

It would appear that the path our moon makes around the sun is locally convex. This
is a result that many people, mathematicians included, at first find counter-intuitive.
While the path of our moon is locally convex in our model, starting at any initial
position it takes about 19 years to return fairly close to that position. The unu
situation where the sun, the moon, and the earth are nearly collinear, while at the sam
time a full moon occurs at the winter solstice with the moon at perigee, takes p
every 7*19 = 133 years. This happened on December 21, 1866 when the Lakota
Sioux, taking advantage of the exceptionally bright moon, ambushed the U.S. Ar
in Wyoming. The next occurrence of this celestial phenomenon was on December 21,
1999.

Reference

1. Bertotti, B. and Farinella, P. Physics ofthe Earth and the Solar System. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dor-
drecht, 1990.

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