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Hello Out There !
Posted: 29.09.2003, 21:54
by Luke Phillips
I just recently got this wonderful program and have become addicted overnight! Question: I understand that the asteroid Toutatis is supposed to make a very close pass to Earth in 2004 sometime. Can this be accurately simulated using Celestia?
Posted: 29.09.2003, 22:57
by granthutchison
Try it and see. Exactly a year from today, passing within 1,500,000km.
The orbital elements are a little out of date for the encounter, so it isn't exact, but it still works pretty well.
Grant
Posted: 29.09.2003, 23:05
by Darkmiss
Hello Luke.
Good to have you here.
Posted: 30.09.2003, 00:01
by bh
Hello Luke!
Regards...bh.
Posted: 30.09.2003, 00:11
by selden
Also, don't forget that it's really close
right now!
However, I just downloaded from Horizons the orbital elements they predict for next year's flyby, and the results shown by Celestia aren't quite the same as the prediction made by NeoDys at
http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?objects:Toutatis;main
The date's the same, but Horizon's xyz shows a time of closest approach that's almost 12 hours later.
(as usual, this links to a larger image)
*grump*
