Solar System Lagrange Points - FINAL VERSION AVAILABLE

[Chuft-Captain]

Whoops missed that one. As to your questions,

The L4 and L5 points are home to stable orbits so long as the mass ratio between the two large masses exceeds 24.96
http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/ ... range.html

L1-L3 will continue to exist regardless.

Thanks MKreur,
My model already includes the 24.96 threshold in it's calculations (you'll notice it doesn't include Charon-L4 and Charon-L5 for the Pluto-Charon system).

What I was actually questioning is whether the existence of the 4th body (Charon) breaks the model altogether for Nix and Hydra. (Remember that the formulae are based on a 3-body approximation)
Charon's orbit lies about 1/2 way between Pluto and Nix/Hydra) and given it's significant mass,...intuitively I suspect that the perturbative effects of Charon on the orbits of Nix and Hydra (and by implication their theoretical lagrange locations), would be so significant that to model them with this 3-body approximation would be unrealistic. (Including the L1,L2,L3 points)

What I suspect is that if they exist at all, stable or semi-stable Lissajous Orbits in the Nix and Hydra systems would be somewhat more complex than in the Earth-Moon system.

[MKruer]

Gotcha, your question is in the same vein as my highly elliptical orbit question. The more I think about it, the more I think that above graph above is correct. I draw this conclusion because in order to equal the gravitational effects and object speeds for the L3, it would need to have an orbit that is the mirror image of the original orbit.

[Brendan]

How come some moons have points in the ssc file like Pan and Metis but can't be found in Celesita?

[Chuft-Captain]

How come some moons have points in the ssc file like Pan and Metis but can't be found in Celesita?

Thanks for pointing that out Brendan.
Those moons do not come with the std package. You'll need to download a file called minormoons.ssc from CVS here: http://celestia.cvs.sourceforge.net/cel ... c?view=log

Put it in your extras folder, and those moons (and their L-points) will miraculously appear.

[Chuft-Captain]

With the improved facilities for marking objects in CELX, I'm thinking of writing a script to mark and label the lagrange points.....

EDIT: This post has been moved to here: http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13618

Regards
CC

[ajtribick]

The fact that L4 and L5 are unstable at mass ratios greater than 24.96 doesn't mean they do not exist as stationary points. In fact since the L1, L2 and L3 points are always unstable and yet are included, it seems inconsistent to exclude the L4 and L5 points when they too are unstable.

[Chuft-Captain]

Andrew,

Thanks for the feedback.
Please see: http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13618&p=113796#p113796

Regards
CC

PS. Don't forget to vote