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Saturn Flyby: Detailed Simulation

POSTED BY: Jeffrey Bryant
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Beautiful simulation, Jeff! As an astronomer and Mathematica enthusiast, it warms my heart :-)
POSTED BY: Rand Baldwin
POSTED BY: Alexander Trounev

Good job Jeff! For my taste we can remove the stars from the scene but add moons 

QuantityMagnitude[
 UnitConvert[
  PlanetaryMoonData[{"Mimas", "Enceladus", "Tethys", "Dione", "Rhea", 
    "Titan"}, {"OrbitPeriod", "SemimajorAxis", "Radius"}], "SI"]]

We can also add a shadow to Saturn and calculate the elliptical trajectory of the satellite. As a result we get such animation Saturn
POSTED BY: Alexander Trounev

Nice approximation. I'm assuming you chose arbitrary initial positions for the moons and also ignored eccentricity and inclination? Trying to compute actual positions of the moons, taking into account perturbations, etc is quite challenging. Also, I'm curious how you simulated the shadow on the rings.
POSTED BY: Jeffrey Bryant

Very nice simulation. It might be improved by making the rings fractal-like, see e.g. J. Li and M. Ostoja-Starzewski, “Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal,” arXiv: 1207.0155, 2012. SpringerPlus 4, 158, 2015. A. Malyarenko and M. Ostoja-Starzewski, “Fractal planetary rings: Energy inequalities and random field model,” Int. J. Modern Physics B 31(30), 1750236 (14 pages), 2017.

POSTED BY: Martinos Starzewski

Very nicely done!
POSTED BY: Carl Sutherland

Great Scott! This is sweet!
POSTED BY: Daniel Bigham

That's amazing Jeff!
POSTED BY: Christian Pasquel

FWIW, I have updated the movie and the post to use a new texture for the planet itself. The new texture will be available from EntityValue in a couple weeks and shows the north polar "hexagon" seen in the Cassini imagery.
POSTED BY: Jeffrey Bryant

enter image description here - Congratulations! This post is now a Staff Pick as distinguished by a badge on your profile! Thank you, keep it coming!

POSTED BY: EDITORIAL BOARD
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