I got the formula for the Hill sphere radii from Sheppard's paper on the irregular satellites of Jupiter. I wanted to see how close the irregular satellites' orbits came to the surface of Jupiter's Hill sphere.
I guess that I could make the spheres for the major satellites but I would need to figure out how to use the masses of both the planet and sun and the satellite's distances from both of these bodies. It would be nice to see them expanding and contracting as the distances between the satellites, the planet, and sun changed.
Ok, here it is:
Code: Select all
"Mercury Hill Sphere" "Sol/Mercury"
{
Radius 220605.5
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Venus Hill Sphere" "Sol/Venus"
{
Radius 1010801
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Earth Hill Sphere" "Sol/Earth"
{
Radius 1496083
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Mars Hill Sphere" "Sol/Mars"
{
Radius 1083734
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Jupiter Hill Sphere" "Sol/Jupiter"
{
Radius 53122627
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Saturn Hill Sphere" "Sol/Saturn"
{
Radius 65153536
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Uranus Hill Sphere" "Sol/Uranus"
{
Radius 70013234
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Neptune Hill Sphere" "Sol/Neptune"
{
Radius 1.16e08
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
"Pluto Hill Sphere" "Sol/Pluto-Charon/Pluto"
{
Radius 7663646
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 1e-9
SemiMajorAxis 1e-9
}
}
Notice that I have Pluto set up to orbit Pluto-Charon, the barycenter. So just take that out if you don't have it. I also noticed that the spheres are not visible unless I got close enough. One of the planet's Hill sphere is really huge (guess which one it is
) yet I can't see it from the inner solar system. Do objects beyond a certain distance from the camera get clipped? I saw that happen when I learned a bit about OpenGL.
This is the first time I posted code to the forum so if I make any mistakes, I'm sorry.
Brendan
