OrbitMaker - Creates Star Systems and Planetary Systems
Simulates the gravitational interactions of groups of stars and planets. Various start up configurations, called star files, are provided, and others can be constructed and saved. Two sky display windows provide X-Y and Y-Z coordinate views. The X-Z view can be revised to produce a 3-dimensional view of the orbits. A data window displays the position, velocity, acceleration, and energy of each body and indicates whether or not it is bound to the system.
The speed and accuracy of the simulation can be set, as can a number of display characteristics. The simulation not only displays the orbits accurately, but the varying speeds are portrayed fairly accurately. All objects in OrbitMaker are referred to as stars, although they may represent stars, planets, or spacecraft. Up to 200 stars can be used, but the speed of the simulation will decrease as the number increases.
Each star has a specified mass and initial position and velocity and may be classified as one of several types of stars or as a planet or spacecraft (see below). Masses are specified in units of the mass of the Sun, and distances are specified in units of astronomical units (AU). Each star has a number for identification. The number can be shown by selecting View|Show Numbers or by pressing F8. Stars are specified as one 9 types, including a planet or spacecraft type body. The distinction is that each type has a specified allowable mass range, and the size and color are specific for each type.
A star file contains the types, masses and initial positions and velocities of a set of stars. It also contains a short text description of the file and some display information. 19 files are provided with OrbitMaker, including one for our solar system, and others can be created and saved easily. The simulation proceeds by computing the position of each of the stars at successive time intervals.
You can adjust the size of this interval, referred to as the step size, which determines how fast the simulation will proceed. After a user-specified number of these steps, the stars are displayed in the sky display windows.
OrbitMaker uses three windows. Like any standard windows, they can be moved, resized, minimized, or maximized. The two Sky Display windows present two different views of the stars. The scale factor is the same for both windows and is expressed in AU for the full screen width. Pressing the left mouse button while the cursor is in either Sky Display window will bring up a window containing information about the star closest to the cursor. The window displays the initial star type, mass, position and velocity. It also shows the current star type, mass, spectral class, radius, temperature, luminosity, position, velocity, and acceleration.
Finally, two circles show the standard and realistic colors for the star. Mass, radius, and luminosity are given in units of the Sun’s values. The Data Display window displays the star type, mass, position, velocity, acceleration, kinetic energy (KE) and potential energy (PE) of each star, and indicates whether it is gravitationally bound to the other masses. The kinetic, potential, and total energy of the entire system is also displayed at the top of the window. The Windows menu item allows you to select certain standard window configurations.
With OrbitMaker you will have many ways to explore gravitational systems! Comes with a detailed user's manual that helps explain this aspect of astronomy.
IBM & compatibles, Windows 2000/XP/Vista $59.95
