Category Archives: Python

Crudely Approximating the Orbit of 2 Pallas from Three Observations

Continuing my efforts to understand how orbits are calculated from observations, Riley Fee (Shoreland High School alumnus and current Auburn undergraduate student) and I worked through the first part of the example of calculating the orbit of 2 Pallas from Ch. 13 of Tatum’s Celestial Mechanics. I still want to justify the linear equations that this approximation solves more clearly and with a diagram.