If you don't read the paper, at least enjoy this movie of our Figure 2! In this simulation, q is the particle's pericenter, normalized to the primary's long axis. The point is that you need q>1 to avoid reimpacting the primary during pericenter passage, and that is not always easy!

Working up here at the Obervatoire de la Côte d'Azur, #Nice today and gave a talk on #Comet activity modelling this morning #PlanetSci.
Thanks to everyone who came and thanks very much to @harrisonagrusa.bsky.social for hosting me!

I just compute the orbital elements, then calculate the corresponding xyz positions over 360 degrees of true anomaly. Then it’s a simple ax.plot(x,y,z). I wanted to have the lines fade away like in Rebound but it was a bit more work.

Just wait until the garden is up and running. You’re gonna hate me

Ralphie is my style icon

This image should be properly credited. It was made by Yun Zhang for her paper on 'Oumuamua: arxiv.org/abs/2004.07218

I saw and would totally apply but this I think New Zealand is outside the allowable parameter space of my two-body problem :)

I also installed mods to include Jupiter Trojans and KBOs, so maybe New Horizons or Lucy are next on the list. Or maybe I get back to work...

I launched in 1978 (a year late) so I ended up having to skip Saturn. But my flybys of Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune needed less than ~50 m/s of mid-course corrections. Maybe I am a real rocket scientist?? I forgot how great this game is!

Another one. This paper is “The feasibility of deflecting asteroid 2017 PDC using neutral beam propulsion” by DeCicco et al., 2019 (Don’t worry, 2017 PDC is not a real asteroid!)

In fact there was a line in the show where they mentioned all of the DART results were published openly!

Thanks!! That is if I ever end up posting anything :)