Celestia Forums

I made a javascript calculator to find the Lagrange points:
http://orbitsimulator.com/formulas/Lagr ... inder.html

I believe the problem with comets is that the water has the wrong isoptotes: too much heavy water. Asteroids would be more likely.

There is also a black hole in every dryer...... :lol: What confuses me about black holes is that 1) nothing can escape the gravity well, and yet 2) Black holes produce xrays which stream away from the event horizon. Now how are the xrays able to do this one? Nothing can escape after crossing the ev...

...although he hasn't been very vocal lately... I guess I should post more often :) ...My question is, does anyone know of this program? Is it good and accurate (relative to, say, other freeware)?... It's actually quite good for testing the stability of orbits, in my biased opinion :lol: . You woul...

The biggest problem with a natural moon interior to the Moon's orbit is that it is theorized that the Moon was formed just outside Earth's Roche Limit, and spiraled out to its current position. So it would have swept this region clear. It's possible that the Earth had more than one moon billions of ...

In table 1 of the journal paper, does anyone know what K and lambda[sub]0[/sub] are? My guess is that K is the observed velocity of the star at time T. And since the star's velocity will be sinusoidally oscillating between 0 and its maximum value, lambda[sub]0[/sub] is the planet's position in the o...

lol. I didn't even see your post when I posted my sim numbers. How do you integrate the drop?

This problem either requires calculus or an n-body simulation. Using n-body with Gravity Simulator: Ignoring atmosphere, it would take it 4 hours 7 minutes, 53 seconds to fall from geosychronous orbit, assuming that its orbital velocity was zero. It would be travelling 10.3 km/s as it hit the ground.

my guesses (font color = background color) highlight to see.
{

1. Alberito?
2. Saturn
3. White dwarf
4. pulsars
5. organic molecules
6. ejected stars
7. acretion disk of a neutron stars
8. other universes


}

Orbits around L4 and L5 points aren't really orbits at all. The object's only true orbit is around the parent body (Earth in your example). The "orbit" around L4 or L5 is simply a matter of perspective. Look at the bottom 2 images on this page http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/tutorials/rotating...

I don't think that animation gets it right. The long axis on the white ovals should always align as close as possible with the Moon's orbit, and never go perpendicular to it. They're known as tadpole orbits. Tadpole orbits with enough energy to make it beyond the Moon's L1 point would be know as hor...

Might want to explain what the "Kozai Mechanism" is... I've never heard of it and I've done some orbital dynamics in my time... If you Google or Yahoo it, my website is first :) . There's an explanation that attempts to sum it up in laymans' terms, and a few diagrams. But you'll probably want to re...

Just a thought... I overlooked where you said you wanted to hide from all the planets. You could orbit the Sun interior to Mercury. It's a futuristic space station, so shading themselves from the Sun wouldn't be difficult. Your spacestation would be lost in the solar glare as viewed from every plane...

Chuft-Captain has suggested some good hiding points. Earth's L3 and the Moon's L2 aren't stable, but only minor correction burns can keep you there indefinately. Of course you're not invisible to an interplanetary spacecraft designed to look for you. Christophe is right. Even a polar orbit has to cr...

Only 11 years to wait! And for me, a short drive to Oregon. But 2045 will be the biggie. I only have to drive 2 hours north. I'll be 81 then.

That's very cool!

Why should they point to the geographic center? Local "down" is going to be towards center of mass.

It's amazing what you can expose by severely exaggerating a system.

Here's a link to a page I wrote about the possibility of Sedna being captured into Solar orbit. http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/articles/sedna.html It is theorized that captures would have occured early in the Sun's life when it was still part of a star cluster. The encounter speed between the...

I've heard a figure of more like 1-2 inches a year. The Moon would have to approach about 1,500,000 km from Earth before Earth lost its grip. This is known as the Hill Sphere. But like Dollan said, the further it ventures, the slower it receeds. Earth's rotation would tidally lock to the Moon orbita...

i wanted to know this... when i used auto save... the data txt file that was created... was too complicated to comprehend... is there any way to make it more readable??? I agree it looks a bit cryptic, but it's meant to be imported into a spreadsheet program where you can add titles, etc. If you us...

Except that its slowly orbiting away from the Earth? d.m.f. Yes, but this is in reference to the hypothetical situation that the Moon all of a sudden found itself outside Earth's Hill Sphere. The Moon is slowly spiraling away from the Earth. As a consequence, the Earth's rotation is slowing down. T...