Planets trailing sun, revolving around galaxy

[Neospring]

Is there a feature where there is data of the sun orbiting around the galaxy while showing the helix paths of the planets being dragged by the gravitational pull of the sun?

[tuto99]

Is there a feature where there is data of the sun orbiting around the galaxy while showing the helix paths of the planets being dragged by the gravitational pull of the sun?

Or more simply, are there orbital trails for objects?
Yes there are. If you have played Ubox, you should already notice them, unless you turned orbit trails off.

[Dan Dixon]

See this post for the an improved simulation of this:
http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,8568.msg96165.html#msg96165


Great question... This would be very cool to see.

The "Powers of 10" simulation has the solar system in our galaxy, but it's not in orbit around the galaxy. I tried editing the ubox file, but the planet's orbits aren't being updated.

This could be fixed with a simple code fix, however I'm at home for the holidays and don't have access to my main development machine.


I created and attached my work in progress saved simulation file. What someone needs to do is open the objects.xml file and add the Sun's velocity values to the velocities for each body other than the milky way.

If someone can do this then upload the 'fixed' objects.xml file I can post the final ubox file (or you can use the file tools to edit the ubox file and replace the fixed objects.xml file).

Let me know if you want to take on this project and have questions.

I'm sorry the file format doesn't support this automatically.

[tuto99]

Oh, did I have an answer to the wrong question?
My bad.

[Dan Dixon]

He was asking about seeing trails of the solar system as it orbits the Milky Way... Something that I don't think has been done before... and there's no "easy" way to do this by editing the xml files and when you specify a velocity for the sun, the "child" bodies' velocities are not also updated. Although one might think this would work...

[Neospring]

Thanks for such a quick reply Dan,

Ya was a long shot,  it would be a very interesting thing to see, if its possible.

We believed in earth being flat and over the years we learned better, theory still applies how we think about the galaxy. Based on some of the simulations, I find that a new element being added showing the direction of the planet/star as well as the orbital trails of the planets following the direction. A three denominational view of our galaxy I suppose, and not just a flat view of the sun in the middle with planets circling.
This is the only image i could find to show


 

[vh]

well i have managed to put the solar system in a near circular orbit around the milky way galaxy, attached in post. i did this without editing any file manually, so it may not be completely accurate.

i noticed that the balance selected tool could be used to put all objects in motion, by firing an object in the opposite direction, and then balancing it.

After a bit of experimentation, i determined that firing the earth at 240 light speeds will get the sun and all its orbiting bodies headed in one direction at 216 km/s.

you can simply fire the earth straight at the ecliptic, at the sun, and then play for a few 24-hour-time-steps, don't worry about hitting anything, the earth will be moving too fast

select all, and then balance selected. play again and you will see that all bodies are in their original orbit around the sun, only just moving at 216 km/s in one direction. 216 km/s is a good approximate for the orbital speed of the sun around the galaxy

delete the dust in the simulation as it does not move, it is unaffected by balance selected. also delete the earth you have fired

next play the simulation for a few seconds until you have trails of reasonable length, it should look like a bunch of winding lines

fiddle with the camera controls so that the trails are now parralel with the vertical direction.

place the milky way galaxy so that the circumference of the galaxy is parrallel to the trails of the solar system (although you won't be able to see the trails now, the screen should be lined up with the trails, giving you a sense of direction)

now click on the sun, and read the sma. move the galaxy horizontally back and forth until the sma reads around 27,000 to 28,000 light years

trails may be buggy and dissapear randomly, to see the trails pause the simulation and toggle t a few times
___________________________________________________________________________________

at a time step of 1 day, it would take around 8 hours to simulate one orbit of the milky way, which is not too unreasonable, although i can't guarentee that the solar system will behave and stay in orbit

[Neospring]

The planets circling the sun are going about like a flat galaxy. How do you change the variables so you can shoot the sun up with the planets circling around it normally but leaving a trail behind as the sun moves up in a helix/dna pattern


I went ahead and bought universe sandbox, and I found out... yes you can change the Z velocity of the sun and having the planets orbit while trailing along but to actually input the specific data of the planets correctly going around the sun while the sun is moving is a bit different..

[Darvince]

no the sun is orbiting in the ecliptic of the milky way

[Neospring]

how you make a path like that?

Neo System

[vh]

The planets circling the sun are going about like a flat galaxy. How do you change the variables so you can shoot the sun up with the planets circling around it normally but leaving a trail behind as the sun moves up in a helix/dna pattern


I went ahead and bought universe sandbox, and I found out... yes you can change the Z velocity of the sun and having the planets orbit while trailing along but to actually input the specific data of the planets correctly going around the sun while the sun is moving is a bit different..

so you want the sun and planets to be moving in the direction perpendicular to the ecliptic?

if so:

fire an earth object at the sun while viewing the solar system from above. give it very high velocity. play for a bit
pause
select all
balance selected
delete earth object
mission accomplished

[Neospring]

With the neos system it seems that orbital planets like earth gain more days when the sun starts traveling faster then 25 km/s, how to get it to 250+ and have all planets still stay together? Seems RK4 Math accuracy is good till 1 km-20 km/s

[vh]

what do you mean seems like? have you clicked on a object and seen the orbital period increase?

[Dan Dixon]

@vh - That is super cool the way your figured out a way to make it work with the limited tool set. Although your simulation has the solar system orbiting as a flat disk instead of on its side...


I made the modifications to my local copy of the Universe Sandbox 2 code base in order to generate a model of the our solar system in orbit around the Milky Way.

Press Ctrl+D to clear the particles in order to make the simulation run much faster.

Because Universe Sandbox is not also considering dark matter the galaxy, the solar system defaults to orbiting about twice as fast as it should, so by shrinking the mass of the point mass galaxy to 0.16 milky way you get a more correct solar system orbit speed.

And I think I found the article that spawned the original question...
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/12/the-solar-system-is-a-helical-vortex/

In short... the solar system is moving so fast around our galaxy that the spirals are too stretched out to be as awesome as they are in the video above (where the speed is too slow).

[vh]

well i've learned something new today that the ecliptic is perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy

[Dan Dixon]

well i've learned something new today that the ecliptic is perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy

It's actually around 60 degrees, but yeah... yay!

And again... your post was awesome. I was really impressed with your ingenuity. I even showed it to my brother.

[vh]

thanks for the compliment

[Dan Dixon]

Oh yeah... why did you say this?

we use the andromeda galaxy because the milky way galaxy is improperly sized, it is too small.

[vh]

perhaps the projected orbit was elliptical, which made the SMA not close to the distance, because when i checked the distance of the sun's orbit around the milky way, it seemed to show 27,000 ly even at the edge of the galaxy. nevermind that anyways, my claim seems to be incorrect, the galaxy is the right size.

[Neospring]

@vh - That is super cool the way your figured out a way to make it work with the limited tool set. Although your simulation has the solar system orbiting as a flat disk instead of on its side...


I made the modifications to my local copy of the Universe Sandbox 2 code base in order to generate a model of the our solar system in orbit around the Milky Way.

Press Ctrl+D to clear the particles in order to make the simulation run much faster.

Because Universe Sandbox is not also considering dark matter the galaxy, the solar system defaults to orbiting about twice as fast as it should, so buy shrinking the mass of the point mass galaxy to 0.16 milky way you get a more correct solar system orbit speed.

And I think I found the article that spawned the original question...
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/12/the-solar-system-is-a-helical-vortex/

In short... the solar system is moving so fast around our galaxy that the spirals are too stretched out to be as awesome as they are in the video above (where the speed is too slow).

Thanks for the simulation, has been fun tinkering around with.

As far the where the the original question came from... well this theory has been around for a very long time.

[Neospring]

Now how would you shoot the galaxy with everything else through the universe at 1.3million miles/hr

[Dan Dixon]

Also a good question...

In the next version of Universe Sandbox you'll be able to to manipulate the velocities of groups of bodies. This functionality would have made setting up this simulation, much easier...