Questions tagged [celestial-mechanics]
Questions regarding the motions of celestial objects.
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Launch windows for Venus transit; how to convert heliocentric longitudes to date?
Being a bit familiar with celestial mechanics, I know that the Hohmann transfer orbit is the quickest way to transfer between two circular orbits of different radii around a central body in the same ...
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1answer
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Problem with Tychonian model of geocentric universe?
Just like other proposed models of universe in history, Since Tycho's aren't being used, there MUST be any flaws in compare with widely agreed today understanding
Is there any detailed reference ...
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Researching mechanics without “fixed stars”
In the history of humanity, easily observable extra-(Solar System) objects greatly helped understanding certain phenomena inside the Solar System. Importantly, the “precession of the equinox”, and ...
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729 views
Has any moon achieved “retrograde equatorial orbit”?
There are many moons which have low (almost negligible) inclination and can be considered to rotate at the planet's equatorial plane. For instance, Galilean moons have almost negligible inclination (&...
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20 views
Constants of three body problem(2 fixed centers)
I was solving two fixed centers problem and got answer in quadratures. After that i want to find constants of motion. First one is full energy - E. Second is $p_{\varphi}$. And third one comes from ...
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2answers
127 views
How to derive Kepler's 1st Law?
I was going through the derivation of Kepler's 1st Law in the textbook "An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics" by Carroll and Ostlie. From there, I got stuck in a few places in their ...
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49 views
Variation in g acceleration due to gravity
I want to find a routine which will enable me to calculate the variations in g
as a result of the motion of sun and moon. I need to have the date as a variable.
I realise that Dennis Milbert's earth ...
4
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2answers
149 views
Discrepancy between my results of Great Conjunction 2020 and Wikipedia
Using python-skyfield to calculate the upcoming conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. I'm off a few minutes with the times on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Great conjunction times (1800 to 2100)
Using Right ...
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1answer
68 views
Does the Honey moon have a precession problem?
In Steven Colbert's interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson after about 03:16 the following is explained:
But wait, all the moons - all the full moons of the year have ...
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80 views
Will the United States Presidential Election (day asteroid) be back soon?
My google news feed is awash with mono-themed articles, including a near Earth asteroid that passed by around election day 2020 in the US.
We can all hope that neither will lead to an extinction level ...
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1answer
38 views
Is there an antonym for 'transit', i.e. the transit of a celestial body through the meridian
I'm writing software to calculate the rising, transit, and setting of a body on the celestial sphere for a specific location and date. It seems to me that the opposite of transit, at least in the case ...
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39 views
The possibility of rapidly changing the Earths orbit via a passing astronomical object
I assume that the Earth could be “gently” (without colossal tidal or volcanic catastrophe) displaced by a passing extra solar star, brown dwarf or planet and end up perhaps 10% further away from the ...
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Historical Lunar Tables and the Associated Error Bound
Consider as an example, AstroPixel's ``Six Millennium Catalog of Phases of the Moon''---
http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/phasescat/phasescat.html
My question is two-fold:
How are these tables which ...
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2answers
117 views
Why doesn't Earth's leading tidal bulge cause the Moon to start spinning in the opposite direction than its original spin?
Please refer to the image below:
My question is, why doesn't Earth's leading tidal bulge (encircled in the green circle 1) pull on the moon's tidal bulge (encircled in green circle 2), leading to a ...
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1answer
47 views
How to calculate the point on the globe with maximum magnitude with given Besselian elements and given time for a partial solar eclipse?
I am currently working on improvement of an Android app that calculates solar eclipses. For many days now I have not been able to solve a mathematical problem concerning solar eclipses, so I decided ...
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60 views
Charged black holes selective eaters
We have a charged black hole which is negatively charged. For this simple case the black hole is not rotating.
If a negatively charged particle approaches the singularity the electromagnetic repulsion ...
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2answers
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Where do we have it from that the Moon is migrating away from Earth?
I know Neil Armstrong placed a mirror on the Moon and people shoot lasers there which get reflected, by this, measuring the time the light is needing, they can conclude the current distance of the ...
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2answers
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How can the Earth and the Moon be in synchronous rotation if the Moon won't be in geostationary orbit?
It is said that the Moon moves away from Earth and that during the Sun's red giant or white dwarf phase the Moon will be about 40% farther than now and in a synchronous rotation ("hantle rotation&...
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62 views
What celestial mechanics parameters define a lunar occultation of Venus visible from Earth?
As a carry on from the following thread
Are lunar occultations visible to the naked eye?
Is it correct that the following parameters must hold true if we use Moon occult Venus as an example
[LongMoon ...
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47 views
How to calculate eclipses the heliocentric way?
It is my understanding that modern methods for calculating the time and
location of solar and lunar eclipses (e.g. NASA website
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html) are integrating equations of
...
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3answers
7k views
Is Venus in some way tidally locked to… Earth?
The video here demonstrates how Earth sees the same face of Venus every inferior conjunction (i.e., two planets are the closest to each other):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m_ouMC61-w (or https://...
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28 views
Rotating observer plane inside celestial sphere with a given coordinates, time and date [duplicate]
I have plotted stars around the surface of a celestial sphere. At the centre of this sphere, I have a brown plane which is the land. This plane can be rotated in the x,y and z axis.
When x,y,z ...
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1answer
137 views
If Saturn's rings cannot coalesce into a moon because of tidal forces, then how are shepherd moons able to exist?
From Wikipedia:
In celestial mechanics, the Roche limit, also called Roche radius, is the distance within which a celestial body, held together only by its own force of gravity, will disintegrate due ...
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When and why was zero right ascension defined to be at the vernal equinox?
When (and why) was zero right ascension defined to be at the vernal equinox? Who established or defined this standard?
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Why does east and west appear to be mirrored in the celestial sphere?
I'm wondering why East is left and West on the right of the celestial sphere if you look at images of it?
Example below:
(source)
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3answers
135 views
Why does the latitude of an observer affect the hour angle of a body in Stellarium?
I am using Stellarium for astronomical data to help in studying celestial navigation.
While trying to track down a source of errors in my sextant reading or sight reductions I noticed that the local ...
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30 views
Explanation about the resonance, mean motion resonance and libration
I am studying for a project the dynamics of multi-planetary system in resonance. I have two questions about this domain.
In many articles they speak about 'mean motion resonance', what is the ...
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44 views
Strange asymptotic behavior on the Kozai-Lidov cycles
So, in Naoz et al. (2013) is described the Kozai mechanism on three-body systems. I've tried to solve the equations (B1) - (B17) for the example described in the Figure 3 and I got something like this:...
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1answer
106 views
How to calculate local position, knowing the RA and Dec of the center of an image, RPY of the camera, and precise time?
Given a picture of stars - assume it is possible to identify the stars and their Right Ascension (RA) and Declination (Dec). By choosing one near the center of the image (or interpolating RA/Dec to ...
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3answers
297 views
Why does the Sun track out a seemingly sinusoidal path on the celestial sphere?
The question arose because I wanted to understand the path of the ecliptic after reading about it here: https://community.dur.ac.uk/john.lucey/users/solar_year.html
Is the sinusoidal path due to ...
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66 views
Ecliptic line data [duplicate]
I would like to get the data of ecliptic line with respect to celestial equator for a particular day.
Is there any specific URL that can give me this. I only have data for declination of Sun and the ...
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1answer
230 views
Hohmann transfer orbit (Earth-Jupiter system)
Consider the Hohmann transfer orbit of a probe launched from Earth to Jupiter. Assume the orbits of Earth and Jupiter are circular.
I want to calculate the following:
The semi-major axis and ...
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1answer
390 views
Planetary Declination and Axial Tilt
Is it a coincidence that Earth's axial tilt and maximum declination are both approximately 23 degrees?
Mechanically speaking, do planets physically cross the Solar equator, or is declination due to ...
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0answers
83 views
Eccentricity from Analemma
Can the eccentricity of a planet's orbit be found just from the analemma of its star? We can draw an analemma given the axial tilt and eccentricity, but how do we find the reverse?
Note: I already ...
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1answer
55 views
Undisturbed planetary alignment after galactic collision
How do planets still orbit around the empty space where a black hole was after a black hole absorbs the milky way's black hole and keeps moving through space without disturbing surrounding planets ...
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1answer
224 views
Determine Julian Date from Gregorian without formula
As an exercise, I am trying to calculate the JD from a given date in the Gregorian Calendar at a time given in UT. Furthermore, I want to do so from first principles without relying on any formula. ...
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1answer
86 views
How was Cruithne's orbital time calculated?
How was it determined that Cruithne takes 770 years to complete its cycle with Earth? Janus and Epimetheus were disovered long enough ago, and have short enough cycle times, that we've had time to ...
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2answers
281 views
What variables are needed to calculate simple horseshoe orbit times?
EDIT This was NOT a duplicate of Horseshoe orbit cycle times.
But that other question has been deleted, regardless. My original question asked for the answer to the equation(s), and provides many of ...
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60 views
If Earth suddenly stops rotating, will be thrown at 465 m/s? [duplicate]
If Earth suddenly stops rotating, will be thrown at 465 m/s ?
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301 views
Why is Uranus able to support a regular satellite system?
Uranus has an obliquity of 98° which means that the mutual inclination between a satellite orbiting in its equatorial plane and the orbit of Uranus around the Sun would exceed the critical angle for ...
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1answer
336 views
How does the gravitation of Jupiter or other big planets affect Kepler's third law?
Does anyone know a good reference for this?
I once read how Jupiter's gravitation can be treated as a perturbation. I think they expanded Jupiter's gravitation as an infinite sum of one of the special ...
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1answer
110 views
What does “all stop” mean in reality?
In science fiction, when a starship captain commands "all stop," the audience simply assumes that, like a terrestrial naval ship anchored to the ocean floor, the ship literally comes to a complete ...
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2answers
650 views
How does the Sun orbit the Sun-Jupiter Barycenter?
I got the Orbital Elements of Jupiter around the Sun, which describe how it orbits relative to the "fix" Sun.
Jupiter
Semi Major Axis (AU): 5.20336301
Eccentricity: 0.04839266
Inclination to ...
4
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1answer
92 views
Why does the precession of the earth affect other planets?
In the Wikipedia article on numerical integration of planetary motion it states:
...the flattening of the Earth causes precession, which causes the
axial tilt to change, which affects the long-...
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224 views
Is the Milankovitch calendar provably better than the Gregorian one considering a non-constant tropical year?
It's somewhat of a no-brainer the revised Julian calendar (attibuted to Milankovitch) is more accurate than the Gregorian one just because it started with a more accurate estimate of the duration of ...
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126 views
Why planets and stars are always round/oval in size? [duplicate]
What kind of stability it provides to each and every celestial body that each one them are round in shape?
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Implementation of formulae for Meeus for the Moon
With Astronomical Algorithms by J. Meeus (1998)
I have obtained the relevant illuminated fraction of the disk and position angle.
But they're numbers (all Greek to me!) I know, Meeus explains that ...
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1answer
248 views
How to compute the perihelion precession of Earth's orbit?
I want to simulate the perihelion precession of Earth. I tried searching other posts in stack exchange as well relating this question but may be it's my fault that I couldn't understand their answers....
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2answers
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Can Two Stars of One Same Type Orbit Each Other?
This is a simple, textbook definition of a binary star orbit. One low-mass star orbits a higher-mass star in a narrow but definitive center. For example, the high-mass star would be our own sun--a G-...
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How can Earth-Sun Lagrange points L1 & L2 even be semi stable considering the moon?
I know that the Earth-Sun Lagrange L1, L2, and L3 points are not considered stable over longer periods, especially when compared to L4 and L5... But, with the moon orbiting the Earth in the general ...
