Questions tagged [orbital-mechanics]
The application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to the practical problems concerning the motion of rockets and other spacecraft.
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Eyeball planets experiencing "catastrophic" flips
This Youtube video by Anton Petrov shows research1 claiming that tidally-locked planets orbiting the same star in tight orbits may interfere with one another and one planet may cause the other to &...
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Is there an equation that can give position of a satellite around a parent body as a function of time?
I’ve been looking into this lately, and most sources I have used solve this problem numerically. I was thus wondering if there is a proper equation to solve for position without numerical, especially ...
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Geocentric Planetary Configurations
An asteroid is orbiting the Sun in a circular orbit of radius 4AU. Calculate the ratio of its angular diameters at opposition and quadrature.
I have tried using the idea of elongation but it does not ...
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Have we discovered a Galaxy lacking in Dark matter?
This question is relevant but it was speaking about a specific discovery reported by pieter van Dokkum, and the answer then mentioned it was disputed whether the paper's conclusion is even correct.
I ...
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Eccentricity with a law of gravity different from the classical one
How can I calculate the eccentricity of the orbit of a planet (with mass equal to that of the Earth) around a star (with mass equal to that of the Sun) assuming that the force of gravity is given by ...
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Which factor most affects the accuracy of Kepler's Third Law when applied to solar system planets?
We know that Kepler's 3rd Law is not perfectly accurate due to gravitational perturbations of other planets, moons, etc., but which factors most affect the accuracy?
Is it the semi-major axis, mass of ...
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Moon's equation of the centre discrepancy
According to the Wikipedia Lunar Theory article, the first term of the Moon's equation of the centre is
$$22,639^{\prime\prime}\sin l,$$where $l$ is the Moon's mean anomaly. According to the Wikipedia ...
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1:1 resonance of two planets around a star in close proximity - approximate perturbative mathematical treatments?
This question is primarily about the mathematics of orbital mechanics.
The circular restricted 3 body problem (in 3 dimensions) assumes two massive bodies in circular orbits around their center of ...
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What is the most stable orbit around the moon?
Let’s say I wanted to build a space habitat in orbit around the moon. Better still, let’s say I want to build a ring of habitats occupying the same orbital path, encircling Luna, to oversee the mining/...
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How do times of lunar standstills vary over time? If we folded them back into a lunar month plot, would they have "prograde and retrograde motion"?
The recent question Are lunar phases and lunar standstills in sync with each other? brought me to a standstill because I don't fully know what a lunar standstill is. It's one of those words like "...
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Different techniques for calculation of celestial bodies dynamics with different time-scales
Differential equations describing the dynamics of celestial bodies (rotation, nutation, precession and other effects) can be solved numerically, which makes it possible to study their general non-...
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Do solar flares have a noticeable effect on asteroid orbits?
I've read that in advanced trajectory calculations, sunlight is even taken into account. Does this also apply to transient events like solar flares?
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What is the mean inclination for randomly oriented orbits? How to derive it?
I know the answer is $60^o$. But I can't seem to be able to derive the result.
Specifically, how to define the probability density function (PDF) for this problem? Once I have that it should be ...
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Relative orientation in a 1:1 resonance of a planet and a satellite
To my understanding, in a two-body problem of a planet and a satellite, a 1:1 resonance means that the orbital period of the satellite is the same as its angular frequency (maybe not, so please ...
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What's the meaning of "hard supermassive black hole binary"?
In this paper, the authors state in the Introduction that
A hard SMBHB [SuperMassive Black Hole Binary] can eject surrounding stars to transfer their orbital energy and angular momentum, which may be ...
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