Classical Physics

    

Fun with Lagrange Points

Authors: John R. Berryhill

Earlier this century, when SOHO and WMAP were in the news, Lagrange points L1 and L2 on the Sun-Earth axis were topics of interest. Now that the James Webb Telescope has been deployed, there is comparable interest in the off-axis points L4 and L5. The relevant orbital mechanics is that of the restricted three-body problem, in which two massive objects are orbiting each other, and a third body, of negligible mass, is introduced. The present note is an exercise in numerically integrating the equations of motion. This approach produces physically realistic depictions of orbits and other features of interest.

Comments: 9 Pages. 5 Figures, License Creative Commons 4.0

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Submission history

[v1] 2022-07-30 18:29:39
[v2] 2022-08-12 19:38:46

Unique-IP document downloads: 210 times

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