Benford’s Law in Astronomy

Benford’s law predicts the occurrence of the n -th digit of numbers in datasets originating from various sources all over the world, ranging from financial data to atomic spectra. It is intriguing that although many features of Benford’s law have been proven, it is still not fully understood mathematically. In this paper we investigate the distances of galaxies and stars by comparing the first, second and third significant digit probabilities with Benford’s predictions. It is found that the distances of galaxies follow the first digit law reasonable well, and that the star distances agree very well with the first, second and third significant digit.