h4tt3n Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 Hello, I'm currently working on a small educational program that illustrates how planets orbit the sun. I'm learning the neccesary math, physics and programming on the fly, which is very interestng but also quite frustrating! I hope you might help me with some problems... When working with orbital mechanics (or celest mechanics) You often use the gravitational constant G and the total mass of the system M, beeing very close to just the mass of the sun. This have caused me a grat deal of worry: G is 6.673e-11 N*m^2/kg^2 and Msun is 1.989e+30 kg, but when I use these values my formulas go amok. Just yesterday I found out that the two constants are often combned in th so called "standard gravitational parameter" which for the sun has the value 132,712,440,018 Km^3*s^-2, and when I used this value my program worked perfectly. But when I multiply the two numbers I get 1.327e+20 rather than the actual value of 1.327e+11. What am I doing wrong? Any other general or specific advice on how to program orbital mechanis will be received with gratitude. Best regards, Michael (please note that I use SI units, not U.S. ones...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 G is 6.673e-11 N*m^2/kg^2 and Msun is 1.989e+30 kg' date=' but when I use these values my formulas go amok.Just yesterday I found out that the two constants are often combned in th so called "standard gravitational parameter" which for the sun has the value 132,712,440,018 Km^3*s^-2, and when I used this value my program worked perfectly. But when I multiply the two numbers I get 1.327e+20 rather than the actual value of 1.327e+11. What am I doing wrong? [/quote'] You're committing the first sin of physics calculations: no units. Your second term has km3 in the units, but the factors in it have m. 1 km3 = 109m3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tony873004 Posted November 6, 2005 Share Posted November 6, 2005 Hello' date=' I'm currently working on a small educational program that illustrates how planets orbit the sun. I'm learning the neccesary math, physics and programming on the fly, which is very interestng but also quite frustrating! I hope you might help me with some problems... When working with orbital mechanics (or celest mechanics) You often use the gravitational constant G and the total mass of the system M, beeing very close to just the mass of the sun. This have caused me a grat deal of worry: G is 6.673e-11 N*m^2/kg^2 and Msun is 1.989e+30 kg, but when I use these values my formulas go amok. Just yesterday I found out that the two constants are often combned in th so called "standard gravitational parameter" which for the sun has the value 132,712,440,018 Km^3*s^-2, and when I used this value my program worked perfectly. But when I multiply the two numbers I get 1.327e+20 rather than the actual value of 1.327e+11. What am I doing wrong? Any other general or specific advice on how to program orbital mechanis will be received with gratitude. Best regards, Michael (please note that I use SI units, not U.S. ones...)[/quote'] Just to elaborate on what Tom said, you probably did get the right answer by multiply GM instead of using mu. You were just off by a factor of 1000 because you were expecting different units. For example, to compute the circular velocity of Earth around the Sun (assume circular orbit): If you don't want to write your own program, you can use one I wrote, available here: http://www.gravitysimulator.com. But writing your own is fun and educational. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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