All Questions
Tagged with celestial-mechanics planets
70
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For two planets in a 2:1 mean motion resonance , where will their periastron and apastron points be?
I want to animate the changing orbits of planets when they enter a mean motion resonance. Using a 2:1 resonance, I want to show a low-mass inner planet and a low-mass outer planet being tugged by a ...
- 21
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Planet in which satellite (moon) and star (sun) appear together once a year
With a hypothetical system, where the moon would be always on the opposite side of the planet than the sun, in a way that the moon would only be visible at night on the planet.
I don't know if this ...
7
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3
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Falling through the rotating Earth
Suppose you were standing on the rotating Earth (not necessarily Equator or the poles) and suddenly your body lost the ability to avoid effortlessly passing through solid rock.
Because the earth's ...
- 81
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4
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Is it possible for the planets to align?
We've all heard the statement that on the 21st of December, the planets in the solar system will "align" from the point of view of the Earth. I assume this means that they would all be in the same ...
- 28.3k
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What is the relationship between mass, speed and distance of a planet orbiting the sun?
After reading this fascinating story about a new exoplanet, I was wondering about how mass, speed and distance determine a circular orbit of a planet around a star.
Given the mass of the sun and star,...
- 113
9
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Does a tidally locked planet have seasons?
Could a tidally locked planet have seasons?
According to my understanding, a tidally locked planet rotates around itself exactly once per rotation around its sun. However, if the axis of rotation of ...
- 1,125
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Will Neptune change Pluto's orbit some day?
My seven-year-old son loves astronomy-- so much so that we read space books before bed time. One of our books talks about Pluto's orbit crossing over Neptune's orbit and will be (or is) closer to the ...
- 550
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Collision of Phobos
Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. Both are irregular and are believed to have been captured from the nearby asteroid belt.
Phobos always shows the same face to Mars because of tidal forces ...
- 1,516
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7
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Why is the universe so organized?
If you think about the Big Bang and the flow of matter in all directions, you would think, how unorganized would this universe be? No matter how long it would take. The idea that matter or most of it ...
- 347
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Why are the orbits of planets in the Solar System nearly circular?
Except for Mercury, the planets in the Solar System have very small eccentricities.
Is this property special to the Solar System? Wikipedia states:
Most exoplanets with orbital periods of 20 days ...
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