Recent content by cfsenel

TurtleMeister, I messed up a little bit initially with my usage of terminology, as I am not even learning it; I just remember couple of things from high school and freshmen physics. In my last post, ##a## is the distance between the two bodies and ##r## is the radius of the less massive object...

From the way you add the radii of M and m to get their separation, I conclude that you portray a motion where M and m has the same period, and are always on the opposite sides of their orbits. I just realized this makes perfect sense, given that we must keep the center of mass at a constant...

Alright, they orbit their common center of mass, makes sense, but I didn't quite follow: if they are both orbiting, a is the radius of which orbit? Since you gave their separation as ##a\frac{M+m}{M}## (by the way, how did you find this formula?) which is greater than a, it cannot be the radius...

I must say that I have not studied celestial mechanics other than the crumbs I learned at high school. Now, what discomforts me is the orbital period formula I saw on Wikipedia: T=2\pi\sqrt{\frac{a^3}{G(M_1+M_2)}} I do not understand where does this M1+M2 can possibly come from. My thinking is...