Two-body orbit trajectory

Two bodies with different masses orbit about their common center of mass.

Two-Body Orbits JS Model

The Two-Body Orbits JavaScript Model shows the motion of two objects (e.g., binary star or moon-planet system) interacting via Newton's law of universal gravitation.  It is designed to teach physics, Earth science, and environmental science topics by showing the spatial path of objects around their common center of mass (barycenter). Default units are chosen for Earth obit about our Sun so that the distance unit is one astronomical unit and the time unit is one year.

Credits:

The Two-Body Orbits JS Model was developed by Wolfgang Christian using the Easy Java Simulations version 5 (EJS 5) modeling tool.  Although EJS is a Java program, EJS 5 can create stand alone JavaScript programs that run in almost any PC or tablet browser.

 

Information about EJS is available at: <http://www.um.es/fem/Ejs/> and in the OSP ComPADRE collection <http://www.compadre.org/OSP/>.