# Tagged Questions

The orbital-motion tag has no wiki summary.

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### Vector cross product of $\mathbf{r}$ and $\ddot{\mathbf{r}}$ in polar coordinates

I'm struggling with the following question: Question 6 A planet of mass $m$ moves under the gravitational attraction of a central star of mass $M$. The equation of motion of the planet is ...
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### Earth and Moon computer simulation [closed]

So I want to simulate the solar system but want to start simple with one orbiting body. However, I never did anything like this before and was wondering if anyone here could give me some hints. ...
1answer
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### Defining the star as the ellipse focus rather than the barycenter, what does the other focus do? [duplicate]

There are a lot of images and animations on the internet depicting two bodies orbiting around their common barycenter. The barycenter is defined as the (let's say right) focus of the ellipse. If we ...
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### Mercury's Orbital Precession in Special Relativity

I am researching Mercury's orbital precession. I have considered most perturbations and general relativity. I am still not satisfied. I need your help. I need a solution to Exercise 13, Chapter 6, in ...
1answer
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### Oberth Effect in deep space

Does the Oberth effect only apply when in orbit of a planet or would a rocket generate more and more thrust (if kept on) even in deep space? Wikipedia explains that the faster the rocket goes, the ...
2answers
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### Orbits within a $-\vec{r}$ field

Let's say that we have a cold dark matter theory, so we imagine weakly interacting particles. Now, let's say that one of those dark-matter particles has a rare interaction while traveling through the ...
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### Understanding Kepler's $2^{nd}$ law in terms of angular momentum conservation

A) Explain how Kepler's $2^{nd}$ law - "The radius vector from the Sun to a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal time intervals" - can be understood in terms of angular momentum conservation. I ...
3answers
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### Why do people claim electrons are accelerating

A lot of text books mention that one of the reasons that classical mechanics failed to explain atomic and subatomic processes is that electrons which accelerate should release energy in the form of ...
1answer
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### Orbital mechanics and rocketry: Is it ever a good idea to intentionally lower periapsis?

tl;dr: Hohmann Transfer appears to be the optimal way to achieve a circular-to-circular orbit, but is it possible to lower the periapsis in order to achieve a more elliptical orbit with apoapsis at ...
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### Is it possible that 5 planets can revolve around a single star in a single orbit?

I'm writing a novel and I'm quite confused if this system could be possible in the real universe. Is it possible that a system exist, where 5 identical planets which could be of same characteristics ...
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### Orbit in the vacuum

As the space is a vacuum and there is no friction in space, Can we assume that, if we place an object in gravity in exactly the right distance from a planet with gravity and in the right acceleration, ...
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### Semi-major axis and ellipticity of a binary system?

In the image below (source at bottom), it seems to be suggesting that \begin{equation} a = a_{1} + a_{2}, \hspace{8cm}(1) \end{equation} where $a_{1}$ and $a_{2}$ are the semi-major axis of the ...
1answer
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### Has anyone on Earth ever seen the dark side of the moon and if so where are the pictures? [duplicate]

If the Moon rotates then we should see the dark side right? But as far as I know the Moon only shows one side to Earth, how can this be if it is rotating?
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### Solar Catastrophe [duplicate]

Consider all of sudden the sun vanishes. What would happen to planetary motion. Will it continue to move in elliptical path or move in a tangential to the orbit immediately after sun vanishes or move ...
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### If the moon was rapid enough would it be able to orbit the earth from a close distance?

If the moon was close in orbit that it's surface was like 100 km away from the earth's surface. And it had a large enough angular velocity will it be able to hold orbit? If this was possible, is ...
2answers
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### Towing of asteroid

I recently studied that NASA has planned to tow and place it in the orbit of the moon. My doubt is when asteroid is placed in the orbit near moon.since the gravitational field of earth is very ...
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### Saturn ring stabilization

The rings of Saturn are the most extensive planetary ring system of any planet in the Solar System. I'm wondering, what power is primarily responsible for that stability? © Public Image by NASA ...
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### Gravitational potential outside Lagrangian points or Lagrange points

The diagram in Why are L4 and L5 lagrangian points stable? shows that the gravitational potential decreases outside the ring of Lagrange points — this image shows it even more clearly: If I ...
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### Runge-Lenz vector and Keplerian Orbits

Is the loss of closed Keplerian orbits in relativistic mechanics directly tied to the absence of the Runge-Lenz vector?
1answer
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### What Speed Would an object need to leave the earth at to reach L1? [closed]

Let's say the Earth is an airless sphere. What speed would an object weighing 1 kg need to leave the surface at in order to get to and be motionless at L1, where the Moon's gravity becomes stronger ...
1answer
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### How do you actually define an orbit?

How do you actually define an orbit? I believe, Newtonian Mechanics describes an orbit as one object in free fall around another where projectile paths become elliptical. I think, Einstein describes ...
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### How much energy would it take to move the asteroid that has been implicated in the dinosaur extinction by a few centimeters? [closed]

One of the greatest mass extinctions occurred about 65 million years ago, when, along with many other life-forms, the dinosaurs went extinct. Most geologists and paleontologists agree that this event ...
4answers
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### Is Feynman's explanation of how the moon stays in orbit wrong?

Yesterday, I understood what it means to say that the moon is constantly falling (from a lecture by Richard Feynman). In the picture below there is the moon in green which is orbiting the earth in ...
1answer
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### Simulating an orbit, primary is not at focus

I've been toying around with some -very- simple orbital simulators, mostly using preexisting physics libraries (I took a layman's stab at doing it with vectors too). The thing that is confusing me is ...
1answer
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### Motion of mercury [duplicate]

I studied that mercury motion around the sun slightly displace by a certain value in each year. But, this is not predicted by kepler until general theory of relativity. What does general theory does ...
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### General Relativity & Kepler's law

According to Kepler's law of planetary motion, the earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical path with sun at one of its focus. However, according to general theory of relativity, the earth ...
2answers
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### Generalised Kepler's III law?

I have derived the following equation for the time-derivative of the angle that an orbiting particle subtends with one of the coordinate axes, with the other particle at the origin (this is the focus ...
1answer
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### How is the equation of motion on an ellipse derived?

I would like to show that a particle orbiting another will follow the trajectory \begin{equation} r = \frac{a(1-e^2)}{1 + e \cos(\theta)}. \end{equation} I would like to do this with minimal ...
3answers
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### Condition for closed orbit [closed]

I'd like to know when an orbit is closed. I know that, to have a closed orbit, there is a ratio that must be a rational number, but I don't know other things..
1answer
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### How can a satellite's speed decrease without its orbital angular momentum changing?

I have no idea what the answer is. I'm supposed to answer it within 3-4 sentences.
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### Stresses in asteroid during close flyby

The acceleration of an asteroid (such as 2012DA14) as it approaches earth is proportional to the reciprocal of distance $r$ from earth center, squared. the derivative of the acceleration, or jerk, is ...
2answers
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### Shoot object into the Sun using minimal energy

Say I want to shoot a cannonball into the Sun with minimal energy (minimal initial velocity relative to Earth). In which direction do I shoot it? Let's neglect Earth's gravity, if that would make ...
1answer
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### Can we transfer burn to another planet at any time?

Assume delta-v isn't a problem and circular orbits. EDIT: Assume that you're already in orbit so you don't have to shift a massive load of fuel up, and the absolute ideal is something that has a ...
1answer
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### Lagrange L4 L5 points and perifocal plane

I have 2 satellites at the L4 and L5 points and these are watching an object. Each satellite provides the angle to the object from its own position from a line parallel to the $\text{x-axis}$ of ...
3answers
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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 ...
2answers
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### Planet's Moon attrated by sun [closed]

I'm currently writing a code to generate solar system and $N$ number of planets / moons. I use real data to test (earth / sun / moon data). I succeeded in placing the earth and make it orbit around ...
1answer
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### Finding orbital eccentricity

I have this problem: They give me, from a satellite that is in orbit in earth, a value for the period, and the closest height to earth surface, the ask me what the eccentricty of the orbit is. I have ...
1answer
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### Energy in orbit of satellites around the earth lost?

If the total mechanical energy in a satellite's orbit (assuming circular) is greater when it is closer to the earth, and hence smaller when it is farther from the earth, then we can say that as the ...
1answer
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### Two moons of Earth?

Hypothetically, suppose there is a situation where the Earth's moon gets neatly sliced into two equal hemispheres, and the force responsible for this slicing also creates a distance between the two ...
3answers
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### Gravity in other dimensions than 3 and stable orbits

I have heard from here that stable orbits (ones that require a large amount of force to push it significantly out of it's elliptical path) can only exist in a three spatial dimensions because gravity ...
1answer
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### Can you tell just from its gravity whether the Moon is above or below you?

If you are on a place of Earth where the Moon is currently directly above or directly below you, you experience a slightly reduced gravitational acceleration because of Moon's gravity. This is what ...
2answers
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### Is the gravitational potential of a planet in orbit always equal to minus the squared velocity?

Say a planet (mass $m$) is orbiting a star (mass $M$) in a perfect circle, so it is in circular motion. $F=ma$ and the gravitational force between two masses $F=\frac{GMm}{r^2}$ so ...
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### What is geostationary orbit radius?

I'm asking this apparently "general reference" question for the simple reason: I was unable to find whether the quoted everywhere "35,786 kilometers (22,236 mi) above the Earth's equator" means ...
2answers
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### Where does energy for high and low tides come from?

High and low tides are caused by Moon gravity attracting water. Now there's friction, waves cause erosion, their energy is used in power plants yet the tides work for millions of years and are ...
3answers
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### Is there a mathematical relationship here or am I looking for relations when there are none?

When I was taking classical mechanics, we dealt a lot with pendulums, and orbiting bodies problems. This lead me to think about the two situations depicted above. Left: Shows two balls of equal mass ...
3answers
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### Does Kepler's law only apply to planets?

Does Kepler's law only apply to planets? If so why doesn't it apply to other objects undergoing circular motion? By Kepler's law I'm referring to $T^2 \propto r^3$
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### Deviation from Earth's orbit

How much orbital deviation is required for the Earth to get knocked out from current orbit so it either moves away from Sun or towards the Sun?
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### Angular momentum power plant on Earth

If tidal power plants are slowing down Earth's rotation then is it theoretically possible to build a power plant that would drain energy from Earth's angular momentum (thus slowing down it's ...
2answers
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### Can an orbit be calculated using two points and transit time?

Working in only two dimensions and assuming that the central body is at the origin of the coordinate system, given two points in space and knowing the transit time between those points, as well as the ...
1answer
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### Convert latitude of lowest altitude to argument of perigee?

I am designing an orbit around Mercury. I know the values I want for the semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, and RAAN. I want the altitude of closest approach (periapse) to occur at ...
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