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Corkscrew-like stable two-body system

Without the original script we can only speculate, but almost certainly "While playing around with different values..." means your initial velocity vectors were not carefully calculated to ...
uhoh's user avatar
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5 votes
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Do the Galilean moons' orbits around the Sun have loops (i.e. have concave parts)? And if so, how can their orbits be graphed?

Compare the orbital speeds and use the superposition. Jupiter's orbital speed around the sun is around 13km/s. Io's speed around Jupiter is around 17km/s. So it will actually go backwards. For ...
planetmaker's user avatar
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4 votes

Appropriate NEO databases for preliminary orbit determination simulations

The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the officially designated clearing house for all asteroid observations, including Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). Their database has the records of all observations for all ...
astrosnapper's user avatar
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Would a planet's tidal forces really push away a moon out of its Hill Sphere?

Would the planet's tidal forces seriously cause its moon's orbit to expand so much that it's outside its Hill Sphere? That seems counterintuitive to me. Tidal forces drop by the distance cubed, and as ...
David Hammen's user avatar
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2 votes
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Would a planet's tidal forces really push away a moon out of its Hill Sphere?

You can think about this in terms of energy conservation. The orbiting moon has a certain amount of kinetic and potential energy. The spinning planet has a certain amount of kinetic energy in its ...
James K's user avatar
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