Sentences with phrase «stable orbits farther»

Not exact matches

Planets don't form in such tidy arrangements, which suggests that the TRAPPIST - 1 planets were born in orbits farther out, before migrating inward and becoming trapped in the stable, resonant orbits.

«One of the most significant things we accomplished, and Trevor (Williams) played a key role, was determining that, at its farthest point, the spacecraft - Earth - Moon angle doesn't need to be 90 degrees, but can vary as much as 30 degrees from that and still provide a stable orbit,» said Chad Mendelsohn, a Goddard engineer involved in the orbit studies.

Recent numerical integrations, however, suggest that stable planetary orbits exist: within three AUs (four AUs for retrograde orbits) of either Alpha Centauri A or B in the plane of the binary's orbit; only as far as 0.23 AU for 90 - degree inclined orbits; and beyond 70 AUs for planets circling both stars (Weigert and Holman, 1997).

Indeed, stable orbits may extend as far as one third of the closest separation between any two stars in a binary system, but according to NASA's Kepler Mission team, numerical integration models have shown that there is a range of orbital radii between about 1/3 and 3.5 times the stellar separation for which stable orbits around two stars are not possible (Holman and Wiegert, 1999; Wiegert and Holman, 1997; and Donnison and Mikulskis, 1992).