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When jupiter and saturn get near earth...


Lan Todak

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The orbits of the planets around our sun are pretty complicated, because they all affect each other to some extent. The orbits are of course not the perfect ellipses normally drawn.

But that's all obvious and well known.

It so well known that (e.g.) "In 1846, the planet Neptune was discovered after its existence was predicted because of discrepancies between calculations and data for the planet Uranus. Astronomers found the new planet almost exactly at the position predicted by the calculations of Leverrier (Adams had also calculated the position independently)." 

http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~blackman/ast104/perturbations.html

 

(For that matter, the Sun itself isn't "fixed" as such, the planets affect it: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter)

Edited by pzkpfw
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