The Solar System – Belts, Tails, Showers – Part 1

You inspire .. Will wait!

 

A must emerge winning post of April 2019.
Tremendously painstakingly picturesque blog making explaining complex integration of planets in solar system to IL’tes.
2. Looking forward to remain high over North Pole and look at spinning planets. Once gone into space vicariously with you but “above-below - East-West-North-south” turns meaningless. I am unable to say for sure - they the comets , in between rocks in asteroid belt, revolves about themselves, around the sun, clockwise or anti clockwise, the lateral position to axis of spin. Mind BOGGLING blogging topology!
Thanks for making us appreciate The Great Designer’s strategic placement of planets, moons, comets all in perpetual motion supplying energy for eternities.
Regards.
God was considered to be by majority above in Heaven; but HE surrounds ALL HIS CREATIONS.
But from where He got all resources or sourced?,?,?,!! God alone knows!

 

Hey Kamala, that is a very interesting bit of information. Of course, like others said, I assimilated some bits, some I need to read again to understand and keep in the bony box. Amazing. Can never stop being amazed at the mind boggling miracles of Nature.

 

I learnt (and appreciated) science much later in life, so I have vivid pinpoints (compared to foregone childhood learning) on when exactly I claimed the epiphany. Mere ko yeh school mein pata nahi. One such epiphany was the consideration of Lagrangian Points few years back.

Back then when I learnt about LPs, that there are 5 Lagrangian Points, I was puzzled why would any asteroid prefer the L4 and L5 points over the rest.

As Latin poet Virgil captured in “Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas” in his work "Georgics" insinuating the Roman thinker Lucretius that “Fortunate/Happy who was able to know the causes of things”. Happy are the ones who delve into the causes of the facts. (*this quote was referred by Clifton Fadiman in the book 'The lifetime reading plan')

So just to stimulate that happiness, in the context of asteroids, and in the spirit of both Feynman and Virgil who both endorsed happiness on extracting the reasons behind the facts, here's a nice summary to complement the original writing on why L1, L2, L3 are unpopular (as in: unstable) over L4, L5 in natural orbits. The man-made satellites in L1-L3 orbits could possibly drift from perturbations in the absence of active nudges (via manual corrections) whereas the L4, L5 orbits are naturally stable.



Hence the "greek" and "trojan" asteroids orbit in L4 and L5 points.

Usually, overwhelmed when something deeper and finer washes over me, jeez! mere ko yeh kisi ne school mein nahi bataya, the beautiful and scientifically reasonable landscape of the celestial rock and glitter. My intent to provide a further reference on Lagrangian Point is to emphasize that even the mundane fact has significant interpretation to make us happy having known the reason behind it.

*: Another of my habit to cite where and how I have come across these references just to assure that I am not making it all up.