View Single Post
  #11 (permalink)  
Old 04-May-2007, 05:10 PM
ColoRambler's Avatar
ColoRambler ColoRambler is offline
Junior Member
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Longmont, CO
Posts: 8
Default

Quote:
Any truth to this remark? Thanks!
No.

People tracking orbits keep track of all sorts of tiny factors. Here's a link to a discussion of the topic (scroll down about 2/3, to "UPDATE NOTES"). Among them:

solar wind
the effects of Jupiter's largest moons (the Galilean satellites)
galactic tide effects
solar oblateness

and so on. This particular analysis is specific to the asteroid 1950 DA, which may get very close to the Earth in a few centuries, but the overall idea is general. We already know about how much these factors affect an asteroid's orbit, so it's not as though a "galactic alignment" (whatever that is) is likely to be a surprise.

Last edited by ColoRambler : 04-May-2007 at 05:12 PM. Reason: busted HTML tags
Reply With Quote