Study the Orbital Motions of Comets

The most famous comet is probably Halley's comet, which has a rather eccentric elliptical orbit:

In[1]:=

1P/Halley

COMET

["Eccentricity"]

Out[1]=

0.96714291

Comets have a variety of orbits, with eccentricities that vary from nearly circular to hyperbolic. You can use distinct colors for the various orbit types:

In[2]:=

planetorbits=EntityValue["Planet","OrbitPath"];

In[3]:=

cometorbits=EntityValue

Halley type comets

COMETS

,

Encke type comets

COMETS

,

Chiron type comets

COMETS

,"OrbitPath";

In[4]:=

Graphics3DMapIndexed[{ColorData[22,1+First[#2]],#1}&,Prepend[cometorbits,planetorbits]],

scene options



Out[4]=

In December of 2018, comet 46P/Wirtanen made a close pass of Earth. You can visualize the positions of the Earth and the comet as follows:

In[5]:=

dates=DateRange

Day:

Mon 15 Oct 2018

,

Day:

Mon 31 Dec 2018

,

10

days

;

In[6]:=

comet=

46P/Wirtanen

COMET

;positions=Dated["HelioCoordinates",#]&/@dates;

In[7]:=

magnitudeAU[data_]:=QuantityMagnitude[data,"AstronomicalUnit"]

In[8]:=

cometcoords=magnitudeAU[EntityValue[comet,positions]];earthcoords=magnitudeAUEntityValue

Earth

PLANET

,positions;

You can view the scene from a couple of different vantage points to observe the different orbital inclinations involved:

Out[8]=

""

Wolfram Cloud Resource Object

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