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madsmh
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How does one correct for tidal forces when (classically) simulating the orbits of solar system bodies?
Calculating and predicting the change in lunar rotation and orbit seems to be fairly do-able or so they claim.mfb said:Tidal forces don't affect the motion of the center of mass unless the object is notably different from a sphere. If that is relevant, just calculate how large the effect is and take it into account.
I would expect an issue with the integration scheme. How does the difference change if you change the step size? How many moons with mutual interactions do you consider? Do you consider the other planets?madsmh said:Thanks, can you point me to some resources on how to do that?
I am making a solar system simulator, and the errors I get when simulating the larger moons of Jupiter are about the diameter of their orbits when simulating three years. I have made some animations and can see that they fall behind their reference positions quite early in the simulations. And my current hypothesis is that it's due to tidal effects.
Huh?madsmh said:6 Saturn: 179597 km