Cool online toy: make your own solar system!

[CalliArcale]

I saw this linked at Mental Floss, and it's pretty fun. You can define the sizes, positions, and velocities of several bodies and then let 'em go and see what happens.

My Solar System 2.02

 

[a_lost_packet_]

Neat!

Whoops... I broketed it..

 

[reimk4526]

This is cool. I can't seem to get it to simulate a planet and moon in stable orbit around a star of a binary system though, I'll get it eventually...maybe.

 

[nimbus]

Managed a three body system, where the moon (around a planet around a star) rotates normally around its planet except near perihelion, where the planet steps out of its orbit (for about one orbit's time) and swings toward the star before being drawn back into orbit around the planet. Was stable for about 15min at the most accurate setting, though there was lots of drift for the whole system.

 

[Solifugae]

This orbit makes no sense to me

Is that actually possible in real life? An orbit in which the smaller does not orbit around the larger body, but just "orbits" towards it in a circle instead? I have never heard of any "orbit" like this.

It almost seems as though they are colliding when they are closest, but the smaller object doesn't disappear (is absorbed) like in the impact you can see with the blue line. Perhaps in real life, the objects would come close enough to steal material from each other, before the smaller one is flung off into its orbit again (assuming such a thing is possible, of course).

EDIT:
Wait! I was wrong! The blue and purple planets didn't collide with the "star", they were swept out in an ultra long orbit, before coming back and colliding with the green object (star, planet, whatever) and being destroyed at about time 20. This has disturbed the weird orbit of the green object, causing it to collide with the yellow main body.

Actually, wait, I was wrong again... The blue and purple objects didn't collide with the green object. They've just reappeared and seem to have collided with the main body, before disappearing.

It look like when things "collide" they just get an impact flash and disappear from the screen, but they don't stop existing, because they keep orbiting. I don't understand this program.

 

[nimbus]

Collisions add the mass all but one of the objects involved to the remaining object involved.

The green orbit in your picture looks like it's got perihelion under the yellow object's graphic. What might happen is that the yellow object displaces to the bottom right when Green is at perihelion just up and left of Yellow.

 

[3488]

Pretty cool. I was able to stable a 4 body sytem (two planets around a binary star).

Andrew Brown.

 

[reimk4526]

I created a 4 body system, binary star system with 2 planets, the blue body (one of the planets) remained in stable orbit around one star, the green body (the other planet) however was in a semi-stable orbit that periodicity swapped between the stars until its orbit collapsed and collided with a star. My question is can this situation exist in reality.

 

[dragon04]

This is like having a Spirograph. Except without the paper, pens, pins and plastic things that always break.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

This is like having a Spirograph. Except without the paper, pens, pins and plastic things that always break.

The Spirograph System, for your enjoyment.

Seems pretty stable. Though, that small moon must be made out of tough stuff to avoid being broken to bits after being snatched back and forth during the planet's aphelion. The planet must not feel so good about its companion either... Not a nice place to live, I imagine.