3 ms·
From that wiki page: >Although the L4 and L5 points are found at the top of a "hill", as in the effective potential contour plot above, they are nonetheless st
by harpersealtako 5y ago
From that wiki page:
>Although the L4 and L5 points are found at the top of a "hill", as in the effective potential contour plot above, they are nonetheless stable. The reason for the stability is a second-order effect: as a body moves away from the exact Lagrange position, Coriolis acceleration (which depends on the velocity of an orbiting object and cannot be modeled as a contour map)[20] curves the trajectory into a path around (rather than away from) the point.[20][22] Because the source of stability is the Coriolis force, the resulting orbits can be stable, but generally are not planar, but "three-dimensional": they lie on a warped surface intersecting the ecliptic plane. The kidney-shaped orbits typically shown nested around L4 and L5 are the projections of the orbits on a plane (e.g. the ecliptic) and not the full 3-D orbits.
- jakear 5y agoDamn astronomy is crazy. And the point still stands!
- reasonabl_human 5y agoMind blowing.. dang!!