How do I compute an orbit?
How and why do you actually calculate an orbit? The question is easily explained. There are very important reasons for this.
In the astronomy The question often arises how to calculate an orbit. In fact, orbits are of great importance. This applies not only to planets orbiting a star, but also to space travel and satellites.
What is an orbit?
- Think of the orbit as the elliptical orbit that a planet describes around a star.
- A stable orbit can only arise if the gravitational forces and the centrifugal forces that occur cancel each other out. This means that a celestial body must have a certain speed at a certain distance from the central star so that it remains in orbit.
- If the speed of the celestial body is too great, it would leave orbit over time and drift into the vastness of space.
- If the speed is too slow, the gravitational forces would pull the celestial body in the direction of the central star. That would eventually lead to a collision and the celestial body would be destroyed.
- But now you are probably wondering how to calculate an orbit.
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How to calculate an orbit
- The astronomer Johannes Kepler dealt with this question as early as 1618 and also found a solution for calculating orbits. The third Kepler law reads a³ = p². The mean distance to the central star is designated as a. P is the abbreviation for the period of revolution.
- So that you can better imagine this, a small example follows: The earth is at a distance of one astronomical unit from the sun. An astronomical unit is abbreviated to AE and is 149.6 million kilometers. The period of rotation is 1 year.
- With this data you can now calculate the orbit of the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is 5 AU from the sun. Now all you have to do is calculate 5³. The result is 125. All you need to do is take the square root of the number 125. The result is: 11.18. This means that it takes Jupiter 11.18 years to orbit the sun once.
Now you will be wondering why Jupiter is orbiting? The orbit of Jupiter is very easy to calculate. Once you understand this principle, you can use it to calculate all orbits.
